This was going to be my concerto,
but I decided to keep silent instead.

You see, I once wanted my words to matter.

I taught the word perfection how
to play the violin and master the skill
to keep art from emotions and piece how to hold
itself together in something beautifully monosyllabic.

I wanted my words to matter so much
that I would sing them when they were better spoken,
wear them when they would fit perfectly in my pocket,
build them when they may have been broken and then try
to write an elegy out of their ruins.

So I can't make peace
and I can't make music or anything else that sings.
My words don't matter.
They don't care.
They took to sailing blank pages,
they took to silence.

Perfection undid the strings
of its violin and repainted itself with a
lovely watercolor definition.

My peace is holding itself together,
but as we all fall apart and become more than one,
it's slowly crumbling apart
because to stay beautifully monosyllabic is to stay young,
important, new.
So little to say and that's okay
because my words aren't supposed to matter.

You see, I wanted my words to matter until I began speaking them before singing them,

before calling out to them and expecting their echoes to be filled like footsteps with the unspoken.

This was going to be my concerto,
but I can't make music if I can't
even make peace with myself.