If Not Words

then what —
a pencil line down paper,
abandoned x and o,
hummed tune dropping
out tune, fingers against
a memorial bracelet,
rubbing a memory raw,
bookmark, TV, languid jazz,
cold fireplace,
a penny in pocket
to feed the lint of
a missing item, like people
who are no longer
a crowd of confusions,
a glass of Bordeaux
ebbing as evening flows
inward, the silence
which has a claw-hold on
every abandoned decision,
the body of you, the verbs
of your every emotion,
the entropy which is your
presence in this room,
when words are excluded,
when a lingering finger
of light scratches down
the blackboard of this silence?