Resonance
There’s a ringing in my ear.
The doctor says it’s nothing —
just the nerve inventing sound
where sound has gone.
I know it’s just in my head.
It’s just in my head.
But some nights I think I’m hearing
what the field has lost —
the frequency of something
that stopped calling
and left its pitch behind.
They say whole ranges now
fall silent. Creatures
whose names we never learned
taking their one note with them
into the dark.
And still this ringing.
As if loss had a frequency.
As if absence could be loud.
But then — ring.
Ring like a struck bell
that hasn’t stopped
since the mountain,
since the light tore open
and the voice said listen —
a trumpet, then. Let it sound.
The walls it levels
are the ones I keep
between this ringing
and what it means —
the small room I’ve built
where a nerve is just a nerve,
where loss is only loss,
where I can name the damage
and call it understood.
The frequency the three
heard coming down,
stumbling, ears full of it,
told to say nothing
but unable to stop
hearing.
Maybe that’s what this is.
Damage and door
I keep trying to close
on a sound that has no interest
in my walls —
the aftertone of something
still passing through.
There’s a ringing in my ear.
Starlight cracking me open
.