OctPoWriMo #11: Silence

Someone else is reading my words.
My fingers slide across the page
as I listen for discrepancies, her voice
twists the story with surprising accents,
inflections I never heard when these characters
came to life out of silence and
spoke to me, fifty-seven chapters
winding through to resolution.
The voice stops.

Somewhere, someday, these words will fill
the silence of a big rig as a trucker heads down a back road
or distract a slow-driving day-commuter.
These words are no longer uniquely mine.
I cannot do one more edit. What flaws there are will remain.
‘Dinna worry,’ Mac’s words fill the silence of my office,
and I sit by my computer, not quite ready to let go
of beginnings and endings,
only knowing the next story will start the same way,
word by soul word, a bit of history, images gathered slowly,
love and loss I truly cannot heal.
‘Bend, don’t break.’ Deidre adds,
‘In love and life, have no fear.’

Today’s poem comes from my listening to wonderful voice actor Amanda Fugate-Moss transform my second book, Years of Stone, into an audio book, with a unique accent for each character. Her voice adds an unexpected depth of emotion – shock, sadness, joy – to this tale set in 1840's Australia, when Mac, a transportee and prisoner, and Deidre, his sweetheart, travel by sailing ship to Tasmania, hoping to build a new life.

Hobart Prison, Tasmania (Pixabay)

Tomorrow's prompt: Black.

You can visit OctPoWriMo at http://www.octpowrimo.com/ to read what others have written. Thank you, Morgan Dragonwillow, Michelle Vecchitto, and Maria L. Berg for hosting this month-long poetry challenge. We persevere!