SOFT-SPOKEN Tiwaladeoluwa Adekunle I speak decibels lower than I should like Daisy from The Great Gatsby; I do it in hopes that people hear nothing; some might call this a way to survive; I knead silence mid sentence (offer it, grasp it); my words teeter into nothing; In the midst of a clause, I consider rocks again; are they silent or silenced; heavy, but with the weight of saying nothing; In the bend of a phrase, I imagine earth unfurling in my fist; my breath catches; no one knows if I'm soft or if I'm fading to nothing. Tiwaladeoluwa Adekunle is a writer and Purdue University graduate student from southwestern Nigeria. Her creative writing is published or forthcoming in Indiana Review, 2017 Best "New" African Poets Anthology, and Brittle Paper. She was selected as a scholarship recipient for the New York State Summer Writers Institute in 2016, and was also honored to win the 2017 Flo Gault Student poetry prize. Previous Poem  Table of Contents  Next Poem