Alarm Clock

I wake to the ringing cacophony of
the patchwork amalgamations of my silence,
emanating from the jar of promised futures
sitting on the table near my bed.
Sometimes, before getting dressed, I like to roll them out,
one by one, across my lap
and run my fingers up and down all of the
bumps and ridges of beautiful words I've saved,
words that still cut like the knives they were never
really meant to be.
I've been told to throw them out,
and perhaps with them throw out the hollow ache
that resonates with every morning's call of haunting silence -
But if I am not filled with the pain of this bittersweetness,
or feel the cuts of your once beautiful turns of phrase
beneath my fingers, with how little will I be left
to remember all the times I loved, and loved so fiercely?

How silent will my silence be when I
open the window and relinquish all the
hopeful dreams and wishes
I never got to see come true?
And will that resulting silence be loud enough
to wake me once I resolve to shut my eyes again?