This thick ear is a humble interface;

a desktop setting for within,

                                                    a triumph

of engineering and aesthetic quirk

that captures sound like a fisherman’s net:

indiscriminate and blind as their jakes.

Your slipp’ry bream-words spill across membrane;

r’leased with salt-water spray from terse blue lips

filtered and,

                       guarded and,

                                                with grey timbre.

I don’t understand.

But my ear lets you in despite myself.

I’ternal screams without voice, a twisting carp

gasping for water in a world made from air,

and so I nod and say anything, everything,

just so the sound stops.

                                           And our eyes then meet.

I mirror your smile, a quieter tide comes in.

No more noise,

                            I am as content as the ‘Davy dark’

but without its depth, its cerulean blue,

its ability to join you in communion.