The silence on edge in your throat

by Simon Perchik

The silence on edge in your throat
helps you breathe, warms your neck
the way all gravestones

look their best –you take air in
though it darkens, is filled
with moonlight then salt –what you hear

is your chest no longer pretending
it’s a sky, has room, time
for the slow climbing turn

wider and wider, swallowing the Earth
till every afternoon overflows
with rivers that no longer turn back

–you still listen for pieces
as the sound a sea makes
in rocks coming by to grieve for you.