You sit with your hands stiff, listless like your stony eyes

that shoot cyanide stares from the top of the stairs,

with loaded words packed into a suitcase for no ears to hear,

fated to seep into the silken matter of that brain

that you keep sealed in a glass jar under your bed

to be taken out and examined under the safe solitude of the night.

And we let the broth-like silence fill the room

and flow through the cracks underneath the doors,

soaking the still shifting house until salty quiet hangs in the air,

before wasting our breath on another chance

like some vagrant Vegas dreamer panning for a stroke of luck,

all the while longing for the safe sound of a still night.

Words fall out in systematic order,

swiftly, stealthily meshing single file into smoky sentences,

like jigsaw puzzles manufactured in a faulty factory;

the pieces are fitted into a perfect rectangle

but the picture inside lies disconnected in fragments and lines;

a scene cut apart, scattered and stitched together.

And the quiet comes again,

with its uncertain tenure lasting ever longer

as the breath of the night rattles the windows

and the echo of one or ten minutes ago buzzes evermore faintly.

It presses against us as we return to the earnest language

of rounded glass on gray matter, uncovered in the dead of night.