The Loss Of Words

He kept them once,

in the lining of his coat,

folded like letters never sent,

warm from the friction of thought.

They used to come easy,

like rain that knew his name,

each drop a confession

he could hold without trembling.

Now they rot in the corners

half-formed,

chewed down to bone,

their meanings siphoned off

by something with a quieter hunger.

He trades syllables for silence,

line by line,

until even his voice forgets

how to reach him.

There is a page

always a page

waiting like a witness

that will not intervene.

And somewhere beneath the ruin,

a single word claws upward,

bloated, unrecognizable,

begging to be written

before it dies again.

Windmills

The wind

keeps trying to explain itself

to the same crooked blades

and they nod

like they understand

but all they really do

is turn

grinding the sky

into smaller pieces

until evening

falls apart quietly

behind them

The Affair I Never Had

I remember her
like a place
I never went

a street
with all the lights on
and no one home

we passed once—
or maybe we didn’t

but something in me
kept waving

like a curtain
caught in a window
that was never opened

and even now
there’s a silence
I visit sometimes

where she almost speaks

and I almost answer

Leon Drake is a Toronto based poet whose work has been published in print and online. He lets his writing speak for him. For art is the best side of us.