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The Secret


by Philip F. Clark


Your hand came toward me
as you laughed, in the middle of a story,
and I forgot listening, and just looked
at you, bright, and sure in your tale:
and I heard somethng else; the soft  
sound of you sometimes at night,
with silence all around us in the room,
as you whispered some vulnerability to me
and asked if I understood. 
It was always your body 
that told so much -- lips working
some secret out; some part that
spoke like that, in the quiet, where 
our voice, of lack of it, filled the bed;
the way that holding someone
is never about language.
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