Silent Heart Attack

When silence is another kind of violence.

Like all the breath you've ever breathed

suddenly swallowed. But since it happened

over days, each night a little worse,

it lacked the drama of my father's death.

He went down, like a building, on his knees.

I sat in the dark inside the feeling

I was turning into stone, or, if I turned

around, to salt, salt-crystals diamonding

the blackouts. Silence is what you hear,

the mouth a moon of Os, black filling up

the body with its blood. I listened.

Each night, all night, my father louder.