Today I have finished my 192 paged A4 Dingbats notebook. I have spent the last 359 days carving into its pages with anger, panic, sadness, joy, love. Here is one of the poems that I wrote nearly a year ago, that would otherwise be forgotten to the bookshelves that harbour away the confessions of my past.

When We Stop Listening

18 February 2021

As I arise to a sun high in the

sky, I absorb the hair of

lively sounds

screaming to be the loudest voice.

To me, it is nothing more

than an absent buzz.

It is only in the absence

of color,

mirrors plating the streets

to presume the illusion

of light from the fogged over

sky that I absorb

the singular song:

a rarity in the auditorium

with no chorus on stage—

empty seats

and heat turned off.

It is only in the absence

of everything that I

hear that chirp outside,

in the darkened sky,

sharing a melody of legato, flexibility,

and a rounded golden vibrato

that I realize those screams were

not screams but

hymns and concertos and

symphonies. I reduced

their sound to a buzz

and now the auditorium is

empty— only one voice

left to say

we took it all for granted.