Who’s Afraid of Silence? by Allison Blevins

I want to tell you pain has whispered its silence on my skin: how we once spent an afternoon ripping our fingers into orange flesh over the kitchen sink, pulp and succulent dripping, sweet coating our arms. I’m washing in the still solidliquidsolid sound. How the yellow day shine-light is now so often both cold and alone—this silence is so loud—and I lay in our bed and form shapes with my mouth and hands to explain. You were supposed to love me enough to save us. I am stones once held together by your certainty. And one day, I might see me as you have. How terrible.
 
 
I wish I had at once known and numbered my dead, anticipated how they would flop to surface gasping. Isn’t love meant to love what rots in corners—love the remains unburied.

Allison Blevins is the author of the chapbooks Susurration (Blue Lyra Press, 2019), Letters to Joan (Lithic Press, 2019), and A Season for Speaking (Seven Kitchens Press, 2019). Her books Slowly/Suddenly (Vegetarian Alcoholic Press, 2021) and Cataloging Pain (YesYes Books, 2023) are forthcoming. Chorus for the Kill (Seven Kitchens Press 2021), her collaborative chapbook, is forthcoming. She is the Director of Small Harbor Publishing and a Poetry Editor at Literary Mama. She lives in Missouri with her spouse and three children where she co-organizes the Downtown Poetry reading series. For more information visit http://www.allisonblevins.com

Guest Editor Katelyn Roth graduated from Pittsburg State University with her Master’s in poetry. Her work has previously appeared online at Silver Birch Press and at Heartland: Poems of Love, Resistance, and Solidarity. Currently, she lives, works, and writes in Kansas City.