Hollow Branches - Where I Buried The Voice

I sang into the dirt before I sang to men. Not out of faith Out of need. I did not want applause. I wanted silence to remember me. The voice cracked. The earth took it. Steam rose. And I became something else. I laid the braid. I marked the bark. I cut the name from my throat with nettle and grief. That was my first note. It didn’t echo. It bloomed. I do not sing to be heard. I scream to be buried, The voice is a shovel, The throat is a spade, Let the rot receive me, Let the breath become blade. Heel on stone. Ash on tongue. Ten breaths through rootlight, and I can speak again. I walk barefoot not for show. I walk barefoot to remember what holds me when I fall. I wrote this in charcoal. I smeared it in rain. I burned the page and drank the smoke. If you call this song a sermon, You missed the wound. I do not sing to be saved. I sing to decay. I gave my name to the silence, And the silence sang it back as root. Where I buried the voice, a mushroom grew. Not bright. Not soft. But true. And when I return to that place the hole, the braid, the breath I don’t speak. I listen.