If I could move your lips for you, I would.
We’ve been friends forever and I can read your emotions, easily.
But reading your words is tough because your lips don’t move,
Not much.
Friendships with new people, wonderful people, have not flourished
Under the strain of communication, but
You are my friend – I want to keep talking with you forever.
And today, meeting in Starbucks, I’m in trouble
As I watch, listen and interpret your lips,
Shaping words for me to see and breathing sounds for me to hear.
Your lips are smiling – but your eyes are not.
Your fingers drum the café tabletop,
Competing with the noise of a hundred coffee cups.
We could talk in a quiet, well-lit place,
But we love the atmosphere here,
And the lower lighting flatters our age.
So whose fault is it – yours, mine or ours –
When for the ten thousandth time
I must ask you to repeat yourself?
I sense your invisible eye-rolling and sighing.
Immediately, I’m both apologetic and resentful
And I want to shout:
OK, I’m sorry to ask you to repeat – again,
But maybe if you moved your damn lips!?
I do everything I can to make it easier,
This café isn’t that loud, or that dark.
We’re sitting close and I’m wired for sound.
The only thing I can’t control is the way you move your lips.
I hate to say it, but you missed the “giving good lip” gene.
You’re just not good at it.
Sometimes I want to reach over and grab a lip in each hand and move them,
So that you can feel how the words should come out.
But I don’t say this, because it’s difficult to change how we speak, and I know you try.
We’ve been friends forever, and I love you.
But if I could move your lips for you, I would:
Keep them pointed in my direction
Move them apart from each other
Slow them down
Free them from food and fingers
Match their expression with your eyes
Let them enjoy rolling around the vowels,
playing percussion with the consonants
If I could move your lips for you, I would.
But I can’t.
So please tell me – again – what you just said.
– Gael Hannan, 2012
