You’ve come to grips with it:

no one’s in the audience.

Every day, you hear yourself,

reverberating in the mic,

saying the same things in different ways,

repeating your truths like mantras,

your words like they came from the mountain.

You must be doing something wrong, though.

Nothing is happening. Nothing is changing.

Nothing nods its head in recognition. 

It must be your thin voice

has not been burly enough, godly enough,

anything enough—enough to grab

at the ear of the world,

give it shake, pull it alongside you.

Make them understand the possible.

So there you sit, feeling shelved,

on the lip of all you imagined,

voluntarily collecting dust.

Are you kidding me?

Get up. Change your clothes.

Slick back your courage and inhale.

The next words you say

are the ones that matter most.

Tenacious. Resilient.

Bouncing off the walls

of an acoustic world.

Go ahead and speak loudly.

We’re listening.

-Katherine Gotthardt