You breathe in the silence
of our telephone connection
breathe it in and release it, over and over.
I listen to the rush of air
in and out against the receiver.
Not the easy quiet of
old friends, this.
Nor the uncomfortable pauses
of those barely acquainted—
This is something else altogether.

I am listening to what lies within you,
listening to what you tell me you have moved beyond,
what you don't want to think about ever again—
I am listening to your suffering.

Not quite a week has passed—and
when you have spoken, you haven't yet used the word
rape.
But the unspoken echoes loudly
through these fiber-optic cables.
Pain knows nothing of words;
it only reverberates in endless force.

I'm moving into this empty space as if entering a room—
was there ever a silence so profound?
I watch the cold, still, blue-black night,
the cars pass through on Route Three,
the streetlight reflects off the snow rake frozen against the porch roof,
casting a pencil-slash shadow against glazed snowdrifts.
I listen to what lies like a stone in your stomach
to what pierces your heart like a sliver of ice
and settles there.
Pain thunders through the dead air
of this fragile connection.