Secrets

I am not quiet or under the din of things.
My heart — even muffled — is loud.
This is the sound you hear at night.

You won’t know how I hush in my coffin,
my death unannounced like wind in the chimney,
a soft howl up and out, a bottle’s blown lip.

I yelled when you left, bawling long past
midnight, even the caterwauling of the dogs
was deafened — a bone, a bed, a dream.

And you hear me coming in slippers,
my feet mourning with the weight of myself.
Only my fear keeps its mouth shut.

Most days it sits lonely in the willow bed
thinking of soft and the shhhh of the pillow,
mute like the living it has learned to mimic.

But some nights it, too, cries out over
rooftops, released like smoke in search
of sky, a sound it can bear to make.