Linda A. Cronin

GATHERING DUST

Listen to Audio Version read by Melissa Cotter.

The concrete sky swallows the air
as I listen to the flicker of wipers cut through the silence,
the rain washing down the windshield.

But you don’t hear it:
don’t hear the relentless honking of the horns,
the hum of the tires on the highway,

or the idling engines of the cars,
as traffic bunches up on yet another routine trip to the hospital.
The same route, the same destination

but always a new unuttered worry.
But you appear oblivious to it all.
Your hearing aids abandoned on your dresser, gathering dust.

My breath suspended in my throat.
There is too much left unsaid
and no safe place to start;

my words frozen in my mouth.
She always says you are a man of few words,
but why are none of them for us, for me?

You stare straight ahead,
your fingers drumming on the steering wheel
as I work my way through an imaginary rosary,

counting the decades on my fingers,
all that’s left unsaid trapped between us.

Linda A. Cronin is a poet, editor and freelance writer. Dream Bones (WordTech Editions) is her first published collection of poems. She tied for first place in the 2014 Allen Ginsberg Poetry Contest and has won Honorable Mention and Editor's Choice several years in the same contest. Her work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and has appeared in literary magazines such as The Paterson Literary Review, Wordgathering, The Journal of New Jersey Poets, Rattle, and LIPS.