It’s the casual careening silence

that pulls us from our empty state

we clutch at pictures and feelings we

cannot remember

and our hangover headaches are too much

to cure with just ibuprofen

and for all the silence, the burden of

sound

keeps me glued to bedsheets and pillows

I can’t get up like you

I can’t think, but for pain

and I realize that something changed

not just a ticker on some world clock in the sky

not some siren that announces my bacchanal festival

but a different, lilting note in the air

announcing to the world

“I have survived.”