Acts of Silence

I watch you look at me. Your eyes say nothing that I will respond to. I am a student of your pupils so in this knowledge of the unseen we are equal.

I feel her eyes swivel with the choking of suppressed speech that is not kindness, regret, pity or even indecision. She taught me the word inchoate. Her carefully punctuated not-looking sprung between my words from my offset. When she folded the clothes of rebellion without comment. As she counted the lashes of punishment without numbers, whilst mentally choosing the menus of reflected choking that surged from my mouth in silence. When she was made into you.

See your eyes. See her eyes. I cannot use my eyes to unsee the unsaid. I cannot speak to puppets or mime artists even if I can understand the artifice, translate the gestures. We share the same lips. Thinly disguised as family bonds. Invisible assertions of nothing. For you can look and not look and still I will not speak.