At six months pregnant, the limits of language make me cry
about every sound: all the lowing cellos—sounds strung up
on laundry lines, displayed like underwear flapping itself crisp
and unopening, how the bow moves like wind across strings—
every tinny brass—beaten into my palms, stalled and toed
up my arms. I don’t play an instrument, but I’m missing
words to explain how every sound feels, how it feels
to grow another woman inside me, how to explain God—
mostly that—
and the child with my hair and eyes I’ll never someday have. How
can sadness mean all this? The words, nameless as the Water-
Drawers,
the Damsels, the 10 Concubines of David—all the unworded
women,
unmouthed and untounged mothers and daughters. Some word
must
exist to give language to all the women who exist only in the
sigh and struggle—
the shuffle on of boots in lingering lines—all those lost to silence.
—Allison Blevins, from A Season for Speaking
Seven Kitchens Press. Used with permission of the poet.