Artlessly, you spill yourself into my ear.
How do you know if I care to hear
your nimble-lipped babbling?
Easily, I could prattle on about myself-
how I'd like to someday move down South
or how I like to write words that erupt in the mouth.
But instead I let your budding tongue
twist itself into fatal bloom.
I watch you boil over until the floor is wet with rhetoric.
And to my silence I swear.
A head nod here and there.
For I do not tend to tell.
I tend to listen
and to listen well.