You question me with patient tenderness.
“I’m fine”, I lie: my leaden undertones
reveal what language struggles to express.   
This sullen murk that seeps into my bones:
I have no name for it, nor has it shape
or substance.  Stagnant, undefined, it sits
in hidden pools from which there’s no escape.
It is my prisoner, as I am its.  
But do not cease to ask: for you, each day
I try once more to picture it in words.
If I could make it concrete, find some way
to form it in the semblance of a bird
and, through the gift of wings, to set it free
then it would lift its cold embrace from me.

First published in Pulsar