In the twilight I’ll be jawing, unsaid words between my teeth,
a phantom rhythm in the fading light as the sky exhales,
its final, bruised purple breath, and I am left with the grit
of all, I couldn’t speak.
My tongue, an anchor, holds the lexicon of ghosts—
sentences abandoned, declarations swallowed whole,
each one a tiny sharp stone in the riverbed of my mouth.
The air grows cool and the grinding begins,
a low, persistent millstone sound only I hear,
spiraling into dust, dissolving into stubborn things.
Now in a cemetery of unspoken thoughts,
a mausoleum where every epitaph is blank,
and in the twilight I perform this nightly ritual,
now in the twilight I’ll be jawing,
grinding unsaid words between my teeth.