PRESENCE AND SILENCE HAVE SOMETHING TO DO WITH EACH OTHER

'I've been thinking about something for a long time,

and I keep noticing that most human speech - if not all human speech -

is made with the outgoing breath. This is the strange thing about

presence and absence. When we breathe in, our bodies are

filled with nutrients and nourishment. 

Our blood is filled with oxygen, our skin gets flush;

our bones get harder, they get compacted. Our muscles get

toned and we feel very present when we're breathing in.

The problem is, that when we're breathing in, we can't speak.

So presence and silence have something to do with each other.'

/ Li-Young Lee

I'm here, even if one might not think so.
Somehow I am always writing, even when I am not.
I buy pencils and a long, sand-coloured silk nightdress that
I never even try on. The silkiness is smoother suspended from
a hanger on the wardrobe door and I can't reject what is
never written down.

I read instead, others that get the words right, inside of books.
I observe instead, others that look beautiful in silk, in posted photos.
And I think to myself that that's more than a little bit sad.
That it is as if I'm holding my breath. I neither breathe out
kind of with purpose nor take breaths in deep enough.
I think to myself that I want to take up space, in my way, like me.
I want to tell the poet that in fact there is a word, one that
we sometimes say in a surely singular way in Swedish,
at the very same time as we breathe in.

YES.