USK | Poetry | McCutcheon

ICE HOUSE

I have started collecting broken silences.
Not intentionally
but by accident.

I was cleaning the house and found so many.
They were scattered
around the floor.

I live in a house of broken silences.
None of them can be mended,
not even with super-glue.

Some silences break and lie
like pools of blood
on the floor
soaking into mats
leaving stains
impossible to remove
even by soaking
straight away
with salt.

Some silences just crack
and it is only later
that you realise
that the damage is
done,
beyond
repair.

I hung the jagged fragments of my
silences
like mobiles
around my room.
Some pieces sit
unframed upon the bench.
The larger ones are
stacked
out the back
beside the
piles of pieces
I still
can not
identify.

In the cupboard by the stairs
are the rare but tarnished
slivers of a silence
I found fractured
on the streets
of the city
after
rain.

The Christmas tree I decorated
with small splinters,
luminescent
samples
from
a forest morning
silence
broken by a
young girl's laughter.

Just for comparison,
not intentionally
but by accident
I have kept one
perfect silence
locked
away
in your room
in just
the way
you left it.

I heard some time ago of a man
who claims to mend
broken silences.
Trained in the country
at a school for the dumb
and having graduated
from a marriage
lasting too long -
he advertised
his talents in the
personal pages
of the paper,
and now makes
a comfortable living
from his skill.

I paid him well, to repair
the silences in my vast collection.
I must say he was impressed
by the range and size
of the pieces I had saved.
But in no time
at all
he had them
back together
and looking
as good as new.

Feeling pleased,
I thought I'd show him
the silence
you had left me.

I opened the door
without thinking
and before I
could stop it
your silence
merged with
all the others...
and the man
frowned,
picked up his
small
repair kit
and left...
very quietly.

I live in a house of silences.
I spend my time
trying to find
which piece of the silence
was yours.

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