Say It Quieter

Everything true I've ever said, I said at about this volume.

Standing up. Sideways on. Looking at something else.

The big versions were always for the room. The room got the big versions.

Nobody in the room got anything.

I've shouted a fair amount in my life, and it moved nothing at all.

Not one mind ever turned because I found a bigger word for it.

And I changed somebody's whole week once by saying something small in a car park.

Say it quieter.

Say it so they have to come in a bit.

Nothing gets truer when you put it through a bigger speaker —

it just gets further away.

Say it quieter.

And say it to one person.

So this whole thing's been recorded badly on purpose, in a room, at night,

with the hiss left in, and the chair, and the bus, and me getting it wrong.

Because I don't trust a word that arrives produced.

And if you can hear this at all,

then you've turned it up,

which means you've come closer,

which was the—