Written by Allison Zaczynski
you’ve missed the joke,
your face accidentally sullen while everyone laughs.
seeing them salivate over the imagined
grisly backstory.
conversations are politics,
the fear of trampling
a voice you didn’t hear.
not knowing how to whisper.
always alert, afraid if you don’t hear
someone, they’ll think you’re rude.
or eating your lunch and mistakenly
thinking you’re sharing a pleasant meal with a classmate
and she calls someone over, gestures to her ears, and says tell him,
tell him about you…and you know…
with every new pair of hearing aids—
you’ll never know the truth of sound.
the fear that you’re walking too loud,
breathing too loud…
so you hold your breath
quieting your lungs.
.
Allison Zaczynski (she/her) is a deaf poet. She is presently a student at Lesley University, earning her MFA in Creative Writing. Her poems have been included in Epistemic Lit, The Hooghly Review, Hog River Press, and Freshwater Poetry Journal. Allison placed twice in the Asnuntuck Community College Student Poetry Contest, winning third place in 2011, judged by Sue Ellen Thompson, and an honorable mention in 2012 judged by former Connecticut Poet Laureate Dick Allen.