Plates

A kind of inaudible screeching.

What is that noise? Metal on metal? Train wheels crossing over tracks? Disks, metal disks…

Or plates, yes plates, plates spinning but rubbing, grinding on each other…

That’s the sound I mean.

The sound that won’t stop, because the plates won’t stop,

Won’t stop spinning,

Spinning at the thought of you,

Yours, your plates spinning at the thought of me,

So that all we can hear when we try to speak is the sound of this screeching,

And though I see your beautiful face, so unchanging, so eternal,

Silently looking at me, talking to me with that unmistakable voice of yours,

There is this sound of plates all the while,

Spinning, twisting, screeching metal plates,

Been spinning since some long-dead exchange that left a foul taste,

Some regrettable offence or unsettled wrong, some failure or fall from the ideal,

And who could stop them now, these plates, their sound?