Forgive This Prolixity

Sharon Leiter

We haven't spoken in so long.
I had forgotten how to talk
and now I practice in my sleep.
I surge with speech.

For all those years, you see,
it wasn't a matter of words.
Of words I had plenty
and scattered like confetti.
Words sprang from the
anxious sweat of my skin,
buzzed in the heated circuits
of my brain. Words buried
me in strange terrain.

And I forgot whatever it was,
once, in an empty room,
I was desperate to tell you,
before the slow, insidious
journey away.

University of Virginia Virginia Quarterly Review
5 Boar's Head Place
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University of Virginia
Charlottesville, VA 22903-3237
ISSN 2154-6932