Poetry by Apple Mae Pandian

                            ​M I T C H Ǝ L L CC



Selective Mutism

I have looked for my words everywhere;
they are missing.
Perhaps I left half under your covers
when we played house. I was the wife
and “wives do not talk,” you said. Open your eyes.
Feel the oceans roll at your fingertips. But
only once I did care for the ocean,
care for me drinking my last water,
care for me drowning in your palms.
But care has to end,
like all the words. And rage,
this orphan, this burning language 
knocked on my tounge one morning, 
courage by her side.
I took them in like a brave mother,
open my breasts for milk and bread. 
In the cupboards we hide from your hands, and
I wanted to say stop!
but stop! is a stillborn in the mouth, a tear
at the back of the throat drying all alone. 
Out of loneliness I invented names,
and each will say, ”Leave love here.”
One grows a beard, the other digs a grave,
screaming, “It was here!” I know.
Happy was there; they buried her shoeless,
brotherless, less than all she ever was. 
If silence will ever by my home
then I must die for rage is not enough.
Courage is never enough.

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Apple Mae Pandian, an undergraduate Psychology student in the University of Mindanao, is a writer of poems. She has first appeared in Trouvaille Review with her poem Lethologica. She is living in Davao del Norte, Philippines with her parents.

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