New Jeanland

Every word
I almost gave you,
folded small enough
to fit behind my teeth.

They lived there quietly,
these little unfinished things,
pressing their palms
against the back of my mouth.

I thought silence
would make them disappear.

Instead,
they learned my shape.

Now they move through me
like ghosts
who have forgotten
they are dead.

Sometimes,
in the middle of the night,
I hear them knocking.

Not loudly.

Nothing in me
has ever broken loudly.

Just the soft insistence
of something
that still believes
it was meant to be heard.

I wonder
what would have happened
if I had opened my mouth
before everything became
too late to name.

Would you have stayed?

Would I?

There are questions
that do not want answers.

They only want
somewhere to haunt.

So I carry them.

The words.

The almosts.

The small, terrible country
between what I felt
and what I let you know.

And somewhere inside it,
you are still standing
exactly where I left you,

waiting for a version of me
who knew how to speak.