THE COLLOQUIAL

The morning speaks in folded napkins,
its breath a rumor of tea and trains.
Somewhere, the sky forgets itself—
a blue too casual for confession.

We speak, you and I, in broken time—
half-sentences, half-remembered hymns.
Between our words, the silence blooms
like lilacs left in an unwashed vase.

—“Tell me,” you say, “where does the dream go
when the clock wakes?”
And I, child of grammar and dust,
stammer out the old faith:
“Back into the heart, where it was first spoken.”

O little world! O colloquial ache!
Each day, a letter unposted,
each breath, a window unlatched.

I love you not with certainty,
but with commas—
those small hesitations
that keep the soul polite.

And so, beneath our ordinary talk,
a rebellion murmurs softly—
the spirit’s wild insistence
that wonder is still possible
in plain speech.

:: 10.26.2025 ::