Of the neighbors' television
And behind the whirr of traffic,
You can, if still and humble enough,
Hear a toddler giggling across the street,
Electricity running through a wall socket,
Platelets bumping the walls of your veins.
But above this, hanging
Over all these sounds is a heavy black canvas,
Tied to the Earth at the corners.
If you wait long enough,
Silence has not only a sound,
But a color, a weight,
It presses on you like dough and fills the corners of your eyes,
Blows on your cheek
And cries in your lap.
~Brandon Payne
