Tongue
Mayumi Olivar



Would you rather speak with barbed wire
words? You know exactly which thorn
cuts the deepest, which spot reaches the heart.

So we live in a tent of silence,
on muffled rage.

I've carried the scars you left me,
written on my body. Some days, I can hardly
walk upright.

So nothing is spoken, no honest words fly
in the air between us. I am dying
of my own suppressed poison.

Why does it hurt more? Why does it hurt still?

I swallow my own tongue
and disappear.