Words Collapse by Tal Lina Berreby

When your name appears in the dictionary of my mind,

Its definition is an ever-changing climate of mysteries.

You are the excitement that slashes down in thunderbolts,

You are melancholy that floods and rains down.

There are moments when you are dry fury that ricochets off the walls.

But in fine print at the end,

you will always be written as cricket noises on hot summer nights.

You see I never needed to speak in order to be heard by you.

When my words lay suspended in the air,

Unable to be collected and sewn together

You take the negative space

and turn it into a quilt understanding.

If our love was a speaker, it would be silent.

When I was a cup of water on the brink of overflow,

my breaths ran quick and shallow,

I watched as you held my eyes in your heart

And as you shared your mind for my soul.

You see I live my life in the unspoken,

many who know its dialect and speak its silence

Are still bound to the chains of words that wrap us tight.

When I speak, my words weigh elephants and clunk off my tongue,

And I get so frustrated I wish I could cut it off with a machete.

The truth is, I don’t know how to talk to people

And sometimes my mouth moves so fast,

I don’t even understand what it's saying

before the words spill out like spoiled milk.

Other times, my breathe moves as molasses does

And I struggling wind together a sentence

Let alone a conversion.

But all time I am reminded that

The words I speak are the pathways I carve to connection.

But you see, there is no Duolingo for sound.

For the way words roll of your tongue,

For awkward transitions and pauses in conversation,

Where you think you're supposed to be talking,

Filling up as much space as possible,

So you seem “cool” and “easy-going”

and everything

that

I

am

not.

Except I don’t need to try and fit my words into a nicely put-together puzzle,

For you to understand that there will always be a piece missing.

There are few words I am sure I speak correctly,

My mind is a landfill of those mistakes.

But every so often I find my missing piece,

Under the waste of my breath,

You are more than just cricket noises on hot summer nights.

You are the translator of my heart.