Mouth

On this side of the world the past
is a continuous mineral hum buzzing
noisily inside people’s teeth—and so they
can no longer speak. Instead, their phonemes
haunt quiet alleys and abandoned
infrastructure—and although some are mostly
imperceptible, several groups have gathered
themselves into particularly hostile adjectives;
they stand on walls and ceilings wearing
polished fricative stops on their belts while
making threatening faces or posing as invasive
grudges. Others have renounced altogether
their status as tame sound units, only to become
a chaotic horde of shrill, savage cacophonies.
My own phonemes are behaving erratically;
lately, I caught a dozen of them hovering above
my hands, trailing over the lines on my palms
to mutually rearrange into nouns such as
“nemesis” “hisses” “ash” and “usurpers”.
Also both my {ō} and {n} sneaked out the window
and didn’t come back for three days; besides,
now that I mention it my {ə} is gone missing as well,
so things sound just plain wrong, even when
repeating them inside my head—It could be paranoia
but I think I feel a tooth slightly vibrating too.
I hate being on this side of the world because
my sanity will be surely compromised if I lose
the ability to use language, but mostly because
I’m gonna miss to death saying beautiful words
like “susurrus" or “epiphany" or “diaphanous"
or your name.