I've gotten better at it, but I'm not a born contemplater, for sure.

[not a drabble; just me shooting off my mouth....]

I can't stand silence when I'm with another person. By myself, I'm cool with silence. But even with people who I'm close with, I can't abide silence. I interpret it as a sure sign we've run out of things to talk about and therefore the friendship is over, because how lame would a silent friendship be? (The silent Marx brother would have driven me INSANE. The episode of Northern Exposure where the weird circus comes to town, and the silent dude falls in love with Marilyn? Creeped me out. Silent Bob? Way too disconcerting.)

Either that, or I interpret silence from another person as a sure sign that they hate me and are cold-shouldering me.

These are totally my issues, I realize, and pretty classic ACOA traits.

When I was a kid, some book I read had the narrator saying, about her best friend, "We didn't say much, but that was okay, because friends can be quiet together." I freely admit that I have never, not even at the age of 33, understood that concept.

I love Silent Bob! And crap, what's the name of the quiet guy on Northen Exposure? His actual name was Bob...

Poem is about 140 word, so over 100...sorry...still very much in progress.

My Father’s Silence

There is something essential
about my father’s silence.

I have heard him recite Chaucer
from memory, his tongue curls round
whan Zephayrus eke with his swete brethe
inspired hath in every holt and heath,
and the words come easily,
naturally.

He can talk forever about work,
about thought and theory;
his wit is as sharp as that Middle Age coot,
with an eye for the absurd and the hypocritical,
the gross and the awesome.

But
simple words,
get caught in lips pressed
suddenly together

I
me
my

cannot escape;
he has a terrible aversion
to first person.
Desperate jokes stand guard, terrible
in their nonchalance.

I wonder if he would answer
if I asked in
Middle English,
if I poured through his textbooks
to translate each word

to ask in a language he speaks:

Who are you?
Speak to me.

Kristin! That's so beautiful! And poignant.

I am Teppy. I have to fill every silence. I'm also the person in class who can't let the teacher's question hang for more than 30 seconds.

Kristin, lovely lovely lovely. But one thing:

if I poured through his textbooks

Is that "pored"?

Is that "pored"?

um. yes.

oops! I would like to say it was a clever metaphor, but no, just a typo.

In the spirit of the drabbles, I got it down to exactly 100 words and fixed that typo! Here's version 2 and all done for now:

My Father’s Silence

There is something essential
about my father’s silence.

I have heard him recite Chaucer
from memory, his tongue curls round
whan Zephayrus eke with his swete brethe
inspired hath in every holt and heath…
The words come easy,
natural.

But
simple words,
get caught in lips pressed
suddenly together

I
me
my

cannot escape;
he has a terrible aversion
to first person.

I wonder if he would answer
if I asked in Middle English,
if I pored through his textbooks
to translate each word,
to ask in a language he speaks:

Who are you?
Speak to me.

Heh. I did wonder, there...(about pour-pore)