she sits curled like a wounded animal,
her midnight blue claws over her ears,
the stone wall to her naked back.

and this one single room
at this one solitary second
out of an infinite more
is filled with a silence
just loud enough to overpower her,
giving an illusion that if someone
were to stop breathing long enough to listen closely,
the tension would become sounds
and the sounds would become words
and the words, thoughts...
but no one else would be able to follow their waves

she lifts her head whenever someone comes around,
removing her hands from her ears,
a faint smile hiding the noise in her head.

after all, her thoughts are hers and hers alone.
there's a comfort in this,
and a darkness.
maybe it's better that way,
but it would be nice, if just once,
when she was glancing around a room,
wondering what everyone else is thinking,
if she would catch just one other person
searching for the same thing.

their eyes would meet for just a second,
just one moment out of an infinite more,
and their shared silence would speak for itself.

***

The poem was written on June 5th, 2000. That seems so ver, very long ago, but it still holds drops of truth, so I was inspired to illustrate her (me?) just recently.