They always seem to feel so judged by me
And yet compassion for them
has always been what saved me
Saved me from their rages
From their tongues
And their hands
Because how else could I have survived it all
but to imagine that they
too must be carrying some
great, deep torment; some ghost
in their tongues
and their hands
And as I grew, I guess I learned to see
the shadows, to feel the cold
that lingered on them as those
ghosts passed through their bodies
Through their tongues
and their hands
And then, gradually, I’d realise
that those whispers had always
filled our home, had always been
at its heart, in its walls
In their tongues
and their hands
And I would know their haunting, and that I
was simply caught in it, by
those rare moments of fresh air
that cleansed us of its spell
So their tongues
and their hands
would be still, or they’d be kind, and I could
know that they were human too
Just stumbling around like the
rest of us are, with ghosts
in our tongues
and our hands
