Unfurling

in this room,
they unfurl word after word

whole languages’
secrets spread across open pages, exposing their connected contents
like suddenly unruffling flowers at dawn
just before –hidden, smooth, now –layers of unfurled meaning
lush and
inkily traced on life-hot blood
petals smoothed, blown across precise tongues
intermingled with movements of eyes and flickering fingers

petals explode inward from walls, floor and ceiling
words flurry and flicker, painful in multitude
so numerous that none can be seen or heard
under the weight of so many ideas, so many languages
webs of shifting connotations flash through translations,
iterations waver, unfolding
pressing in,
a suffocation of petals

nerves short-circuit
and the exotic light of letters become indistinguishable from foreign sounds
strange ways of constructing and dividing
drown in their own sheer number, becoming translucent
in complex almost-patterns, these unevenly spiraling layers
cannot be caught and pressed upon a page

too much unsaid, in this blinding floral chaos
I have no choice but to pick out a voice at random,
holding it in both hands as my own,

in that, I find that the only language I can truly pluck
is the single thick stem
of this one,

my own