Tell-All

I woke that merciful young morning and in the moment between sleep and waking thought I felt the world flow silent in speech and song — like a river first meeting its dam.

Just a steady interruption of guttural ums and ahs is what I heard, a melody of murmurs dripping from the mouth of a yawning earth.

Just a vocal collage of breaths and sighs, some short as a surprised gasp and others deep-chested like a dragon sucking in before blowing fire.

The girl in bed moan-grunted when I kissed her cheek, rolling over telling me to get gone with a slick slide shwhoo-oo across the sheets.

But no words.

I walked the neighborhood with my dog, its fur catching the wind drift and I heard the sound again that goes shwhoo-oo.

Even in the half-light of dawn the birds were still half asleep — all I heard above me was scratchy rustle tussle from twig-nests held together with grains of dirt and raptor spit, the sound like an itch itching itself.

But no song.

My dog didn’t bother to bark, just a grumble rolling along its skin-thin ribcage like a wave chasing down a beach — an afterthought really — as we walked by a man standing straight up and still at the edge of a roadside ditch full of icy runoff, taking huffed long drag after drag on a cigarette, his shirt hanging around his neck despite the chill.

But no words.

Just a stoic shadow born into flesh without a care or the sense to care, lip-locked looking through me and through the leaves, over waters and past the sky.

Dog pulled on the leash toward him once, twice, but still no vociferous note about the man and his danger.

And all around just groans of ambivalence, then a squall, screams that melt syllables to a pitch I can barely hear and surely not make out, an echo — stop — ants moving, leaves touching down — stop — doors cracking open and the grind-catch-grind frightened howl of a train breaking on pounded steel track, the noise fractured into fading faint cries by the frozen air.

Hums of remembrance.

But no word or song called my name, nothing captured for dear memorial memory.

Still my expectation lingered like a daydream in an office, even as another raspy, gruff heave pulsed along my dog’s ribcage.