the growth of the quiet
for Connie Rankin
when you’ve been alone this long, silence
has an echo that aches,
takes on a different meaning
in the dictionary of the soul. maybe
the stars are the only ones who hear
you in the belly of 3 a.m.
as you cry between the sheets,
the breathy whooshhh of the white
noise machine the only witness
who can speak to your distress.
no one heard you in childhood either. why
did you think things would change?
between your now and your then, only
more longing to be known
as deep as your roots, and the growth
of the quiet taking over your life.
here in late december, light can’t reach
the day until the clock hits 7. then,
you can rise, go stand inside the buzzing
busy of the outside world, be distracted
by the voices talking ’round you, try and
drown out just how loud
your daily dose of silence can be. no wonder
you’re happiest now at the bottom
of your dreams. in the blackness of this
space, it’s the only time you get to forget
that no one’s listening to who you are,
and you’re unable to hear a thing
over the soundness of your sleep.
Another Thing I Learned Too Late about My Ex
In the dream, they return from the walk empty-
handed. He’s blank-faced and unconcerned he’s lost
the dog’s collar. The leather collar with the brass
nameplate I special-ordered for this once-in-a-life-
time dog. The too big for my lap
(but still climbed up on) dog I’d often called
my Little Brown Dog. Sweetest of chocolate
Labs. The Dog of My Heart.
(Though of course I loved the others.)
My soul mate, this dog.
Not the ex, who lost stuff.
Who was careless with what counted.
The ex, the Great Compartment-
alizer, the only man I knew who could blasé
his way through the deepest heartache.
The two miscarriages didn’t hit
him anywhere close to his heart,
and even the future deaths of all three dogs—
dogs I knew he was deeply fond of
(or needed, need being the thing
closest to affection for him)—even those losses
didn’t add up. Sadness didn’t sink in.
He’d walk away from anything frownish,
refusing to compute the cost.
How many times did he leave
me at my worst, abandoning my sorrow
to pursue his pleasure? And why
did it take me so long to understand
someone who won’t feel your pain
will only cause you more?
the cold universe that birthed you
other than nightmares about my parents, I dream most often of my sister.
second-born, starry sky of a girl, she sometimes caught our mother’s eye—
though this was not the same as a mother’s love, only the narcissist’s fickle glint.
as the eldest, I didn’t get how it was my younger sister—never me
(pale less-than-a-crescent moon barely glowing under cloudy skies)—only K.
shined for our mother. and though I saw my sister’s light
could be distant and prone to flickering, I also failed to understand
how this green-eyed girl who played third like nobody’s business cared so little
whether our mother noticed her relative luminosity.
how I looked up to her! not my mother, of course. no, not my mother,
with her can’t-support-human-life heart and her steeped-in-night
darkness. no, not her.
the one I idolized was my carefree, too cool for a mother’s on again/off again
(sort of) love sibling, this one-year-younger but three-inches-taller quasar
of a sister who brightened to the pulse of her own galaxy.
with her 36 adjectives to describe lightness of being and her resolve to revolve
away from our maternal black hole, K. (who gave back her given name in high school)
showed me it was doable to dream of surviving on one’s own.
it was even in the realm of possible to thrive, to gravitate somewhere beyond
your barely glowing self, all the while struggling against the deep-as-genetics
planetary pull of the cold universe that birthed you.
Anne Rankin won first prize in Sixfold’s Summer 2014 Poetry contest. Her poems have appeared in The Healing Muse, The Poeming Pigeon, The Awakenings Review, Hole in the Head Review, Passager Journal, and Atlanta Review. Her poem, "left unsaid," was a finalist at the Belfast Poetry Festival 2022.