Perfect yellow pastures

spill out of my dreams

          A man is striking boulders

          with a sledgehammer there

his wrist like a clock hand

swinging only at perfect

          intervals to the tick , tick , tick ,

          of the crack  I always think:

should I be louder? To be

louder, I stretch saran wrap

          over my mouth like across

          the top of a glass bottle

and scream at full volume

my tongue, a bee hurling

          its stinger at the plastic

          in attempt to burst through

Somewhere my voice is caught

in the eardrum lining

          of the friend who took

          my moaning into their ear

like a child into a mother’s arms

while I laid on the tile

          of my bathroom floor,

          empty orange bottle

scattered from my palm

praying not to die

          Somewhere my yelling

          is tucked tightly into the crack

of the couch cushion

my head was pushed into

          while a man took

          more than just my no’s

Some wasps drill a tunnel

to the center of a fig flower

          and die there, their carcasses

          soundlessly decomposing

into protein the figs then form

into fruit   And when a whale

          perishes, its corpse sinks

          to the bottom of the ocean

flesh slowly chipped away at

first by sharks and larger predators

          then by smaller fish

          and smaller fish until

a whole ecosystem forms

around the torn open book

          of its body  Its skeleton

          landing on the ocean floor

at a depth so deep the noise

of its thud can’t escape

          The most important things happen

          quietly  I am no longer

ashamed of what died

in my throat  I never stopped

          screaming  Silence

          bore its way into me

and grew until it tore me

apart, into something

          I could offer the world