SLEEPLESS SUN THINGS - a poem about lipreading –
sounds squirm from your mouth
into my eyes and flip like a fish on the deck
into words and I look at him
and his words dance before my eyes
and I can tell he is sad
from the droop of his mouth
not the loss in his eyes
I know he is worrying
from the way he bites his lips
and even when I cannot hear the words
I can see the pain when he gulps back something
and the anger when his chin juts forwards
and his jaw is set
like concrete his words stiffen
and his mouth becomes wider
until I have to look away.
I don’t really see the way his forearms stiffen
and his eyes blaze -
I see the sneer in his lip and
the force with which he
exhales.
and when there’s joy he’s all teeth and
his lips curve up as he speaks
he pouts at me
jokingly blowing kisses.
he cannot always tell why I am staring at his mouth.
some words are like clear glass and others like
I’m looking through resin
others are black I would never guess through
the obscurity of it all.
and I guess it’s like art
I’m not always going to get it
but I’ll try and sometimes my interpretation
is different but more right in a way
he hasn’t guessed
and we sit with this film between us
and it’s as though we’re each watching a film
and my aids crackle and it’s like hearing
music through a bad connection
but through efforts
and interpretations of
a conversation we will never see clearly
our connection is all the better for it.
the world is softer through my ears
and gentler through his gaze.
the symbiosis of silence.
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