Don't worry—the little awkward
silences you encounter
are nothing at all
like the cracks
in a load-bearing wall.
And—though they thread
and filament through the fabric
of your prefab interactions
and artless attempts at cooperation,
conspicuous as the spider
veins on the legs of your grandmother
or the capillaries
inside your eyes every night
when you stare for too long
at the bathroom mirror—these pauses
are not empty gaps.
Hesitation
is much sturdier, much
stronger than that.
Think of the rebar
under miles of concrete
keeping the road you must one day take
to the hospital from falling
into complete disrepair;
think of the mortar
which holds tight to the bricks
of all the mausoleums out there
built to contain the remains
of each bygone day—
which, like it
or not, we are tirelessly building,
every minute,
every second—stone
by inane little stone—whether we're
doing it alone
or together.
