I’m a D E A F poet
Well, half deaf I should say
Shoot, sometimes being half deaf has its perks
When my sister’s acting crazy
Look who’s got
Two thumbs and can stick one in her ear
to block her out?
This girl
Earphones? Try earphone.
You know how many pairs of Beats I’ve been given
By folks ‘cause they play on one side?
When they say “these don’t work right”
I say “Huh”
I’m already noddin to Lauren Hill, I can’t hear em
But it’s not all roses
When I say
I suffer from single sided deafness
Others say “at least you can hear!”
As if to tell me my struggles aren’t real
As if I don’t have to
Read your lips
Harder than my favorite book
Pull your words towards me
With all the strength I have
Each syllable a boulder
Like I don’t long for the moments stolen as I was
plunged into a chasm of silence
I’m always left craving a little more
of each delicious conversation.
Yearning to hear footsteps as you do
Sets of steps to me sound like
-Silence- STOMP -silence- STOMP.
To be a deaf poet is to hear half the applause
To see the word “congratulations” mouthed merrily from happy faces
only share in half of well wishes
It’s a life of overstimulation and narrow misses.
My left ear
Has made me utter the word
“huh” more than it would care to admit
Huh…sometimes I hate that word
Reminds this ear it can’t do it’s job
Left ear’s puzzled by the prospect of laughter
Curious about the sound of sickness
The rattling that rumbles through my skull each time
I cough
Is not enough
To let it understand the sensation
When I stick an earphone in
The bass unaccompanied by sound
Pokes fun at my eardrum
With every thump
Leaving leftie
Feeling numb
You know, sometimes
My right ear envies my left
With no one to share the burden with
My right ear is the single mother of sound
Abandoned suddenly
Expected to shoulder every responsibility
But every once in awhile, a wind will whip my ears
Teasing my left with it’s silent tickle
Projecting a whisper of light onto the unending quiet
While filling my right with the whooshing sounds
You associate with magic
And I’m reminded that sometimes
My experiences can only have been what they were
Because of who I am
Because in that moment I recognize
That sometimes, half is all you need
To be wholly extraordinary
