The Air Hug of Silence
Monthly Poems, Photos, and Handwritten Marginalia. AND MY ALBUM IS HERE!
Dear friends,
Thank you so much for stepping into this little corner of the poetry world. :)
This month’s poem & accompanying pieces were written in response to a thought about silence & solitude: what does something so abstract—both abysmal & generative, uncomfortable & deeply needed—look or feel like? I hope you enjoy it…
✩ I also have an update! My album is here & the lyric booklet is coming soon! Listen to two songs, four spoken word tracks, and my voice notes discussing the ‘why’ behind each track…all info is on the page below! ✩
Please feel free to share this ‘poetriesletter’ with a friend, your network, or social media (or gift them a subscription)!
If you would like/have the means to support my work, please also consider donating to Gaza Relief & Recovery. ❤️
I hope you enjoy this month’s poem, recording, photos, and handwritten marginalia.
Take gentle, tender care & speak soon.
Gratefully,
The Air Hug of Silence
Please find an audio version of the poem below
At first, I was insulted that the best silence could offer was a passive-aggressive air hug, acting out this false cuddle skit —cold & cruel & cringy— as if I was contaminating its comfort. With this strange skill, did silence just offer the sentiment of intimacy while sleeping standing up? Straight across the room from me? But then, without touch & the brassy sound of my own spoken voice, I tasted something distilled that wasn’t water. Pressed silence, like smoke or gas, recoils into dense saturation, entirely our own doing when we try too hard to fill it up with something or someone or somehow, stuffing it with senses & noise. I didn’t know how to listen softly without expecting the somethings, someones, or somehows. Possibility is wasted when not first sung—sweet sound masked— in silence’s stewarded, rinsing cosmos. Perhaps the space between us & silence isn’t meant to be bridged because there is no space between where there isn’t an ‘us.’ Silence is this sticky thickness both caressing & squeezing the juice from our soul. Perhaps we are strongest as dewy, transient, scatterbrained strangers each day, asking: what shall we be in spaces where we don’t speak, without any need to build one-way streets? Without any need to see these blank spaces and the shapes of each stanza as air hug façades, reaching across bedsheets?
Behind The Scenes Kindling
Before You Go…
Here are a few life-giving poems from some brilliant poets:
Girls Who Never Die by Safia Elhillo (book)
This is a Hymn by Lorna Goodison
Dear Bryan Wynter by WS Graham
The Deer by Terrance Hayes
Invisible Fish by Joy Harjo
Give It Up by Franz Kafka & Sticks by George Saunders (flash fiction, but both so good)
