jar after jar could line the pantry and each jar could
be stuffed full, with word after word. And the words
I haven't said could be stuffed in cans and canned
and frozen and put in the bottom of deep-freeze
refrigerators, or boxed in cardboard boxes and boxed
into a closet or left underneath some basement stairs.
The point is how impossible it is to say anything
worth listening to and how easy it is to try.
Many times, when I was a kid, I felt as if I couldn't
be heard and was rolled into a dough of silence.
My little robot ears heard failure in every sink of
drained water, in every jingle of the car keys,
in every dresser drawer opened. My, my ears were
alert! They were really jumpy! And now, all adultish
and brutal, I still hear my childhood in my whispers
to my children. I hear them walking about the house
and I feel lucky. I also feel stupid because I haven't made
sense of anything and here I am thinking.
