Can I speak
(without technique)
without critique
of the words I use
(that I never had
the freedom to choose)?
The silences sting
more than anything
(as piercing as
a pointed stare or
the point of a finger,
and as deep as a wound
could be and still
remain unseen)
because they ring
(as echoes do)
of an emptiness,
a lack of -
a nothingness
(like the deceiving
vastness of a vacuum
stretching as wide as open arms)
in which it is impossible
to be.