The Friday Feature
Nicholas Viglietti - Rust in Our Souls & the Rot in Our Ways
ISSN 3070-9865
Rust in Our Souls & the Rot in Our Ways
It’s right there –
Tongue tips,
The cadence of risk.
There’s something
I want to say.
It builds and yet,
The words don’t utter
In the right kind of way.
Those things
That rush us;
Those major things
We let get away.
Those things
That rust our souls
And rot our ways;
Those things
That our lips
Never say.
From the Press:
Viglietti performs a compelling exercise in minimalist tension with this body of work. He doesn't specifically name the things that haunt the speaker, but focuses on the physical and spiritual cost of their absence.
By keeping the poem abstract, it invites you to project your own unspoken truths—whether those are confessions of love, admissions of guilt, or suppressed ambitions—into the vacuum of the poem. An innate ability to write a universal resonance; a cadence of risk becoming a rhythm we can recognize in our own heartbeat.
The pacing of the piece is effective and breathless, with lines acting as a linguistic staccato. A mimicry of the psychological phenomenon of a tip-of-the-tongue state, where we find the gravity of a thought is felt long before it can be articulated.
The transition from the airy opening to the industrial decay of the finale marks a masterful shift in sensory experience. Moving the reader from the delicate anatomy of speech into a heavy, metallic reality. He employs the metaphors of rust and rot, the work suggesting that silence is not a neutral act, but a corrosive one. He reminds us that the words we withhold never vanish; they stay within us, oxidizing the soul and degrading us until our very character begins to weather under the weight of what is unsaid.
The poem's resolution—or one could attest, a lack thereof—serves as a haunting reflection of an unlived life. The closing stanza functions like a tolling bell, creating a cumulative pressure that makes the rot feel both earned and inevitable. Vigiletti leaves the reader in the same state of suspension as the narrator. We are left staring into the gap between things that rush us and the courage required to name them, ultimately concluding that the greatest tragedy is not what we lose, but in what we never allow to exist.
About the Author:
Nicholas Viglietti is a writer from Sacramento, CA. After Katrina ravaged the gulf coast, he rebuilt homes there for 2 years. Up in Mon-tucky, he cut trails in the wilderness. He pedaled from Sac-town to S.D. He's a seventh-life party-hack, attempting to rip chill lines in the madness.
He can be found on the following platforms:
Instagram: @nico_chillietti
X: @nviglietti0
Website: www.clipsfromtheclose-out.com
