The
Silence
Is
Killing
Me
One
Body
Shutter
At
A
Time

Pull Me Back to the last weeks of summer
Where things were broken
But I was high off of the sun's rays
The ones from his smile.

Things weren't good

But they were pretty great.

I wish I could swallow your pain as my own
But it's still trapped in the tear that is stuck in the back of your eye.

You are the embodiment of my inner demons.
Your eyes flicker with my worst nightmare.
Your hands are filled with the fury I try to disown.
Your lips are infused with my exact poison.

And I love you like a child who has never been burned.

I don't say I love you so you'll say it back. I say it so there will never be a time when you won't know someone loves you.

I feel it's only right to start this book with you.
Why not start another chapter as I start my days?
With daydreams of you
With well wishes for your thoughts
With high hopes for your days path
With congratulations arising another day and continuing as yourself
You are not only in my every thought, every word, every breath.
You're in my every cell, every atom.
My makeup is of your soul.
What is the difference between obsession and love?
We always joke that I'm crazy but
I'm insanely painfully otherworldly in love with every part of who you are I yearn to know all of the you’s that have ever existed:
I want to see your face when you first fell in love.
I want to hear your voice from the first grade.
I want to feel your last tear the one I never got to see.
I need to know you, need to feel you your soul in mine.
I could write forever and it will never be enough to show you what my world has become.
But that will not stop me from trying.
If you want to know my world:
Feel your pulse
If you want to live here
Finger through your ribs.
If you want to feel my world,
Feel your heartbeat.
My world exists
In the pit of your irises.
My world
Follows the path of your veins.
My world changes seasons
When you lose your breath.
My world comes into focus and clarity as you draw near.
I live in the creases of your laugh lines
I inhabit the sunshine that lay on your shoulders
Your lips are lifegiving
Your voice caretaking
I’ve crossed the threshold
And while I know it's too soon to ask for a key,
I'm finding you leaving the door unlocked.
I can't sense your smell anymore and
I only know that it's nostalgic in ways
Only Home Can Be.

This home is not mine to claim
But this world is the one in which I live
Perhaps not mine, but still perhaps home.

As I remember how her lips felt as they plowed through the barriers of my insisted claims of heterosexuality I cannot help but think,
without falter...

wow

okay,
but this isn't why I'm a feminist.

My attachment to her,
my fellow female,
member of my legion,
has nothing to do with
my squinting eyes
at the
blinking neon signs of
inequality
that hangs about all of our heads every day