Duet

It's a hospital: the way visitors talk about
anything but illness is the language we share,
talking about so-and-so's newest whoosit and
say-and-say's trip to wheelay. It is cowardly.
It is wholesome. It is the way people are

when just too much lies between the lines,
when each feels the stakes are too high,
too desperate to attempt to say what is in
our hearts, what crouches in the back
of our minds, waiting for the utterance

which will free it from its chain of longing
and solitude. Instead it continues: we watch
movies, talk music, and avoid those pregnant
pauses where nothing is said because we fear
everything could be.