Love Poem With Tinnitus by Christy Lee Barnes

Love Poem With Tinnitus
Christy Lee Barnes

With you there is no noise. Heart still as
the street I grew up on,
that sweet, dilapidated cul-de-sac

                       (even with the windows open
                       at most we’d hear
                       a low train whistle or the slight
                       hush of the freeway rush far below us
                       if the wind shifted just right to carry it).

So I catch myself now and then—
my feet propped on your lap, so happy, so full
of the silence I craved for so long—

about to ask about your tinnitus,
whether it is any better. You’ve said there’s nothing
to be done for it,
except to accept and to hope for moments
in which it is absorbed, forgotten.

Sometimes then I kiss you instead,
sometimes just ask
how your book is going and hope
that in these moments you are far from it.
I want more to do for it. But

part of love I think                       is sitting with the pain
you’d fix if you could, but can’t. Giving instead
your silence when your silence
is what you ought,                         what you’ve been asked to give.