When I was growing up, my mother lip
synched everything I said, as if I played
Charlie McCarthy to her Edgar Bergen
on an “Ed Sullivan Show” tape reversed.
Reading her lips, which trembled as they did
bristling with pins every time she cut out
a midnight-blue pattern, I watched my words
come back to haunt me like an echo made
visible. Like those lettered souls dumbstruck
Augustine saw mouth Scripture silently,
she’d repeat my syllables to herself
as gospel. Shadowing my speech, she taught me
to listen while I spoke, so that someday
I’d talk like this, without moving my lips.
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