By Sarah Katz

They Fall Apart

You piece the shapes of my mouth together tracing messages, my constellations bounding deer. You don’t hear me yell until I hold your small palm to my throat. Sound is funny. We laugh at the words. They get in the way, odd winged things.

Words dart around us for nothing. We snicker at those lassoing them together because all for what? Tangled words march away into air, constellations wilder than lightning. We watch others yell, incensed, thrusting thunder from their throats

and laugh, leaping into the hill’s throat behind the school, gathering lilacs, pretty things we want to remember. School bells yell to return. Children gather together like wolves. In dirt, we sketch constellations. Their mouths must hurt from so many words.

You think maybe they don’t. Give me their words! your mouth says. A cracking in my throat. I don’t want to fight with constellations too hard to see. There are greater things I say, things that fit well together, that don’t fall apart. But still you yell,

Give me the words! I’m tired of your yell. I point to their lips. You read the words. You look with your O mouth, your O throat, squinting and the sounds fly away together, blurring by, dying constellations we cannot see. They look like nothings.

Our eyes hurt at the sight of nothings their mouths shape. We map lips and yells flashing by, ineffable constellations, stitching together their half-words, craters in the dark. We feel together for thunder, sewing symbols to their throats