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Articulation
by Troy Varvel Compare my stuttering then to this: my grandfather opening and shutting cabinets most nights after one a.m., looking for anything to make dreams of crowded veins and thought circulations cycle into quiet pumps like our lake’s tide. I tucked his daily silence behind my ear-- the only fluent sound for me, like seeing a star long after its life. He would talk about the moonlight funneling through the water’s heart and the quiet fish. He pondered which fish were stars—like him. Too late now for speech therapy, my other words skip on my tongue. I look through the ripples to see my grandfather in the leather chair burning bright beneath chemical drips that search for white blood cells. Too late now for me to ask him to stop taunting a star’s life, to accept illumination past his time. Still I can’t say s and t and other alveolar sounds to tell him about the time left under stalled constellations of salted night skies. |
Troy Varvel is an MFA candidate at Southern Illinois University, Carbondale. His poetry and fiction have appeared or are forthcoming in The Cape Rock: Poetry, Driftwood Press, Edify Fiction, Gravel, and THAT Literary Review.
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