My ears were needy hands

My ears were needy hands.

I am offered a bounty of words.

Listening is this seduction.

The larger world becomes an enabler.

Response is animation inside me.

These words are to my face.

They bear hidden meaning.

This eventfulness remembered

washes over me.

Brain pollen freely given to the bee.

Attention of this kind

is unconditional love.

Unsaid responses are a backfill.

My eyes look out in a keying way.

I do not say

with either mouth or eyes.

My lips are a muted tension

said to myself.

I hear the inner voices

but not as muttering.

I am comforted in this distortion.

I answer with further silence.

I am a walled room without echoes.

What I hear are laments

but not really.

I am not a ready response.

I do not appear as a listener.

I am not identified by my say.

I am always hours later

that I am finding my voice.

I am where I am,

away from the heat of that moment,

away from the hurl of the impulse,

away from the deliverance

too revealing,

at the heart of the matter of feelings,

at the backside of meaning

senselessly so.

Strip away my first person innocence.

I would rather decode then respond.

The delivery is not now an entrapment.

My responses for then

would have imprisoned me,

made me a custodian to what I said.

Spontaneous spoken words heard

are a retention contract

weighting me down.

But my ears were needy hands

and I fidget with the meanings.