In silence, I pray with a reference never before known to me.
It is soft and fragile,
tentative, like a child,
small, like a grasshopper.
It floats from one ray of light to another,
with a loud whoosh that does not ask for pardon for its sound.
It speaks in a tight whisper,
throat raspy from lack of use,
or maybe too many cigarettes.
It flips onto that same cloud it floated on earlier,
moth wings flapping like some incandescent bug
lit up by the electricity of a bug-zapper.

Fear does not silence it.

--It rings its glamorous wings without entropy--

And so I offer a call into that wide madness of space.

It does not answer.

       I did not expect it to.

And that is okay.

"Stop yelling at me," I tell the walls,
as if they were the culprit.
Stop keeping time with my fingernails,
tracing squares in chalkboard wallpaper.
I have forgotten you.

If only you would forget me.

You trace lines on my skin,
Like a cartography of forgotten myth.

"Don't tell me what to think."
You don't own me.

"Don't tell me how to feel."
That is a priviledge you no longer possess.

"Leave me alone,
Old friend."

Leave me be.

I think you might be magic.

The way you hold me.
Like a fragile but beautiful piece of pottery.
A treasure.
One you make clay with in only a few breathes of intoxicating tenderness.

With everyone else, I am combustible:
A glass-like object, a single place to hold.

But for you, I have curves never explored.
Ones I created.
Ones other created for me.
Ones you hold so delicately.

I have never felt more protected and valued.
More safe.

You are magic.
For making me feel this way.