poem - throe

throe 

Have I lived through 
days of numbing, numb-
erless, unbreathable air, thickly
pressing, caving in ‘round 
attempting ex- and inhale
a suffocating gravity…

buried week upon week of tears
who won’t weep in deafening
silence and sighs relentless.
How could I survive 

dying on every 
side: in-, out-, right, 
wrong side, left … for months 
four months 
fourteen months 
fortress of forty-four months ?

No ear to hear the fear; 
the fear, please no.
Here I fear to ear, 
to ear, no - to hear to
fear? Hear:

I.
Fear,
I
fear
I?
here again, a moan, must for

a year again; yearly yearning 
dust dry bone. This desert:
deserting again, again
another year of hurting.
Reviled I deliver

limbs, my self suspends
in hopes to rend
with, and without amends,
enduringly desperate for ends;
thorough give-ins, 
gives ends for, through and out 
though… I thought,

thaw from frozen; I
thaw the throes then.

~mb, march 2021