Unveiling the Silent Whispers: How Tara Lynn Hawk’s *Talking in Italics* Captures the Unspoken Depths of Voice
Isn’t it curious how the quiet rituals of everyday life—the millions of tiny, unnoticed gestures—can speak louder than any shout? Tara Lynn Hawk’s poem captures this elusive dance we perform: “We speak now only in italics,” she writes, evoking that subtle undercurrent of muted emotion and habitual exchange we often mistake for connection. What if our shared memories and “false tender mercies” are nothing but echo chambers of comfort, replaying until one day, the script breaks and someone simply doesn’t come home? There’s a haunting beauty in this cycle’s inevitability, a meditation on the fragile weave between recognition and absence that feels at once deeply personal and universally familiar. Honestly, it makes me wonder—is our daily routine a safe harbour or a thinly veiled prelude to loss?
We speak now only in italics
Passing each other throughout
the day a hundred times
The familiarity, the recognition in habit lies
there underneath as it echoes back to us
Our false tender mercies and shared memories
Not so clever distortions
Uncommon grounds
One of these days you will not
come home
And the cycle will begin anew
