Read Poem: To the Piercing Underneath my Tongue by Zainab F. Raza

Golden lock,
In shape of a classic knocker
resting beneath its conveyer
to thoughts that I’ve decided to shut my doors against.
Golden lock,
holding unspoken treasures,
Golden lock, an unspoken treasure,
stabbing already raw gums.
Keeps me from sharpening the tongue of what many words that
turned
the misheard away.
And please don’t ask me why I sound so dull,
it hurts to speak.
Tastes like blood in here.
My mouth,
a home to where walls come down,
but who is there to invite?
Who will listen in borrow to
the suffocating voice behind gates of locked jaws?
I find no lending ear.
Who do I invite inside?
My golden knocker,
I made rupture for you by the piercing strike of a needle.
This is revenge to myself
for all that I’ve said,
so I suffer to I say what I think.
So I think twice, before you knock…