Because Because

Because I cannot speak

Because I do not speak

I have stopped, not knowing how to let them out:

these hounds from their cages

Because to release these hounds from their cages would be deadly

Because to release them would mean death to me

To she

Would place death on who I used to be

Because she did not speak, was meek

because she believed in inhereting an earth, which crumbled in her hands

And slicked past her fingertips

To pool in sewage

And collect in the backwash of her mind

And the backwaters of her soul

And the blackwaters of her tongue, frozen

because she could not speak

And was not heard,

by those she spoke to