Silent Sounds

Silent Sounds

(A sestina, neglecting the last stanza)


Inspired by a college student leaving. My first sestina attempt. I'm looking for critiques! Enjoy.


You see the silent sounds
Of the fountain, water falling,
Spray catching your face, making you blink,
Your notebook sticky and falling apart.
The charcoal strokes melting, hours
Of work, blurring until they are gone.

The park is empty, trees bare, leaves finally gone.
You stay sitting as everybody leaves, knowing it sounds
Crazy, to be alone here at night. You can’t bring myself to move after hours
And hours, trying to capture what you see, softening the falling
you will eventually endure, preparing yourself, keeping yourself apart,
Detached, knowing that what you have here is limited, like you blink

And you’ve left it all behind, blink
And you’re suddenly uprooted, one day gone,
Wanting to leave, bags packed, waiting to be far apart
Never thinking the familiar sounds
Of your life would be falling
Away, stretched thin, the hours

Ticking away, after years and years, your hours
Are precious, clinging to them even as you blink
And there! You’re out of time, finished with free falling,
Trying, at least, to straighten your life before you’ve gone
Somewhere new, the idea of that – somewhere new - sounds
Foreign, something uncharted, a part

Of that place you’ve never encountered, you know, the one apart
From your three story house next to trees you spent hours
Observing, the stack of childish drawings capturing the sounds,
Those silent sounds you could always see on paper when others blink
So quickly they hardly notice them. But you can’t anymore, can you? You’re gone,
The trees still standing, the leaves still falling

With nobody there to see them. Everything, falling
Apart
without anybody to see them properly, your ability gone,
Disappearing along with the quickly wasted hours.
Blink. Go on, I dare you. Blink.
Do you see it? Right there. Can you see the silent sounds?