When?

I am surprised at the way eyes slide away when we know too much
there are a few things I wish I could list in an endless way…
maybe I am missing the pictures that go along with the captions
charcoal drawings are the only thing that I can see clearly sometimes
the smudges of gray on white paper catch my eye.

I never learned how to draw.
I never learned how to say anything in a straight line.

I say it all in words that accelerate and spill into open air
a never-ending fall.

My eyes are clouded over in six layers of the past, the one year of the future, the unknown, and every time I said something too soon.

When I prayed for the edges to be taken off the isolation
I became submerged, walking below the snowed-over pieces of the glass I fell through.
There is clarity in the forced silence, but my speech takes over in a avalanche of tumbling words.

I am still learning how to speak.