I Wonder

I wonder



if you can hear what’s unsaid whenever we finish talking



just before we hang up



and I want to say those words.



Sometimes I have to press my lips together, or dig my nails into the palm of my hand



to keep them from bursting out.



They hang there between us, those potentially happy, potentially lethal words,



a palpable presence, throbbing in the air.



But I can’t. I won’t say them.



I know you don’t want to hear them.



That you would shy away from them, then from me.



And I wonder if you heard them anyway.



If that’s why you’re gone.