Not a word by Keya Bergeron-Verma

Not a word

Keya Bergeron-Verma

Conversation slips into the emptiness between sidewalk tiles and sofa cushions, grows old forgotten, unseen. Listen: a shy wind picks up, permeates the vacant folds of day that crave whispers not uttered by withered people who know that losing sleep is finding time so they collect the darkened hours following themselves back to houses they once knew where the trees spring taller than the papers at their feet and the heat is bearable because it once was born and the air doesn't smell like half-filled suitcases and foreign shoes but of lemons and midnight and silence testing time, waiting on park benches that have seen too many faces speak but none that stop for a moment to be. Breathing is a business the price of air is high why waste it on words that fall linger say nothing at all and are gone.