# Song Of My Soul I hear the song of my soul, A melody born from depths untouched by words— It rises like breath from sleeping earth, Like light that learns itself in mirrors of water. This song knows no language, Yet speaks in every tongue that ever trembled. It is the whisper of beginning, The hum that moves through marrow and star alike. I do not sing it— Rather, I am sung. My throat becomes a hollow reed Through which the infinite plays its longing. In silence it is loudest, In darkness most visible. Watch how it bends the air, How it makes the invisible dance. This song is not mine to own, Yet I am owned by it entirely. I am the vessel and the wine, The question asked and the answer withheld. Hear it in the space between heartbeats, In the pause before dawn speaks its name. It was singing before I was born, And will sing when I return to dust. My soul's song needs no audience, Yet sings itself into existence through the listening. It is both the wound and the healing, The exile and the homecoming. This is the only music That has ever truly mattered— The one that plays on, Long after the player has forgotten how to play.

I'm trying to scream,
but the sound doesn't propagate.
It amuses me.

I'm trying to get up,
but the weights that break my shoulders
keep me lying down.

I'm running through all my veins.
The blood grows heavier than steel,
the skin rougher than ice,
and the head is like a shell
that explodes and implodes at once.

I'm trying to reach out, my soul!
A fist deep in the groin of untold pain,
I weep with tears I cannot shed,
I scream with a mute voice,
I struggle on the spot.

Squeezed into my corner,
I beg with my eyes for a breeze!
My flesh trembles, it terrifies me,
but on the surface I sketch
with the last traces of graphite a broken arc,
so that I might still plead only with my eyes,
so that I need not speak the words
that tear the air and summon my demons
through every corner.

I'm trying to break away, but my soul again!
A punch in the groin.
I curl up, I scratch, I flit, I flee.

No!
Nobody hears you!
Nobody listens to you!
Nobody wants to listen to you!
How can I speak when I'm assaulted from every side?
No, no, no, no!
Don't act, don't speak, don't try, don't be!

If now a gust of wind came,
and swept me away,
scattered me into pieces,
would it reduce me to an idea, wouldn't it?

Someone, anything, in this vastness—is there?
Would they notice that I'm gone,
that I've been obliterated, erased from existence?

No!
The bells wouldn't toll,
Everything would be excess,
time wouldn't even remember a fraction
that I was here, that I had a name, that I had a face, that I had a voice.

Why is it?
Because my name is bland,
it doesn't resonate,
because the nothingness of being distorts my face,
because my voice has gone entirely silent,
it has nothing to say.
So it was all for nothing, as if they never were.

Their disappearance will pass unseen.
Comforting, or perhaps delusional—I can't say.
They dance so close together I can't tell them apart.
Both clasped, coagulated,
as if they sprang from the same source.

I'm sitting in my corner, trying to make as little noise as possible.
To blend into the rest of the landscape.
Don't make strange gestures that can't be read,
then interpreted, then stigmatized.

I don't want anyone to understand
the field of war within me, in which
every territory is seized, assaulted, oversaturated,
which I feel spreading more and more.

I can't control, I can't counter, I can't resist.
All that's left is to surrender.
To kneel before the assault,
to watch it approach, to feel
the heavy breath, the cold sweat, the paralysing fear,
and the smouldering howl that chokes me.

# And Then I Wait

And then I wait.
He keeps coming; he’s galloping,
and in the moment of grace,
all the fear, all the grief, all the pain, all the pain, all the time… disappear as if they never were.
Like it’s never been me.

I’m moving slowly.
I’m looking for my place in the most unremarkable places.
I avoid giving voice to all horrors I approve, disapprove, smile forcibly,
and then, like a snail, crawl back into my cell.

It’s just that it’s not on the mountain,
and it’s not modest; it’s vast, impressive, infinite.
In it begins an entire universe of turmoil; passive, insignificant.

There you find all the worlds I’ve created,
all the narratives I’ve written,
all the ones I’ve wanted, but most of all, the unspoken ones.

They all dwell there; they light up, they burst,
I try to calm them down,
but they’re too firm,
and I’m too weak to deal with them,
so I can only let them surround me, run over me, cut me apart.

I’m here, and I’m here.
And I’m not well.
I want to move there.
I’m going over there.
I’m here now.
And I’m not well here either.

I’ve got to go, and I’ve got to go back.
That’s where it was better.
I’m back.
But it feels the same here.
Wherever I go, it’s all the same.
I’m restless, restless, and restless.
I’m moving from one place to another,
hoping I’ll find comfort as small as I can,
but every place is hot like coal.
Every place is as malicious as thorns.
Every place is half-hearted like a swamp.

I have no peace, and I have no order,
everything is buzzing around.
My mask’s cracking, I can’t hold it much longer.

I’m going to break down,
I’m going to break, and I’m going to break.
I’m going to crash under the screen of a grin.
What could be more romantic in a tragedy
than to fall with a rictus of helplessness?