Graphite

By Skylar Nipper

On those days when my voice

Turned to stone, disappeared,

Heavy on my tongue like lead

That looked like the graphite marks

I'd put on paper notes

Handed gently, delicately to my mother,

Like I was trying to avoid

Moving too much air,

Breathing too much air;

When the words were stuck

In my chest like tar,

Hot and melting in my lungs,

Staining my throat like

The marker stains on my brother's

ASL book, like they were trying

To bleed through the cover

And color the signs inside;

On those days when the words

Snuck out of my brain without permission,

Filling instead with missing posters

As if they were erased from language

Like the half-erased doodles in the corners

Of my therapist's whiteboard,

Partially gone to make room

For the words I couldn't force out;

When talking felt too dangerous

Like a ladder on a cliffside,

Overwhelming like a song

Turned up too loud at a house party,

Scattered like the sticky notes

On journal pages I filled with poems,

Like the stickers placed recklessly

On the cover that conceals lyrics inside;

On those days when my voice

Felt unrecognizable, unreachable,

Indescribable, an abstract painting,

An otherworldly thing defying science

Like the stories I wrote filled with

Ghosts and magic and a feeling

That can't be communicated;

When I wrote a story inside

A run-down house, something

That appears only for a second

But is always there, a friendship

Ruined by the last thing

I wanted to do, I found my voice

In graphite, in marker stains,

In half-erased doodles, in verses,

In scattered sticky notes,

In horror-filled chapters;

So on those days, I let my voice

Become something that makes

No noise, something that I can hold

In my hands, that lies heavy with another

But a feather in my room,

And I have grown to speak,

But my voice remains graphite.

By Skylar Nipper