silence is black ink and it fills the room around me
until I cannot see cannot breathe until
I cannot taste anything but your last words in my mouth.
darkness has not fallen but rather it is
dripping
from the ceiling and onto my hair, hands, my face,
spilling over notebooks and cups of coffee.
silence is flowing around me as if someone
has knocked over a jar that contained it
and as if it has been fighting the walls
of that jar
for a lifetime.

it is that empty feeling -- I'm sure you remember --
that feeling you get when you
run out of feelings and salt water and your heart
has stopped hurting but only
because it is gone -- you are sure.
there is only that gap
and it is filling up fast
with melancholy music that you play
to make you feel again
and words you scribbled down
in vain attempts to breathe again.
it is human to hurt this way or so they say
but how does the world still spin when everyone is broken
as broken
as I am?

there is nothing but blank ink
spilling from pages and pages of
where my soul used to be
filling and filling the gaps of hearts long broken
and it is silent and there is no comfort in it
this time
because it is the kind of silence that sounds
like loudness, sounds like screaming, feels like
cars driving in the desert with no airconditioning
feels like traffic jams on highways feels like drowning.

still I write because I
can't.

scheduled a meeting with you
in spite of myself.

wrote down a couple of guidelines.

    "be polite. be friendly.
    avoid her eyes, and her hair as well,
    do not look at her legs, do not look
    for flirty subtext in her casual
    conversation. ask the right questions.
    don't stammer. remember you are not 13.
    don't look at her and smile and say
    'I love you'
    when all you should be saying is
    'goodbye.'"

tried not to worry; after all, it's just
a crush.

after all, I am not really
in love with you
that
much.

"I'm loving you",
she said.
not "I love you",
which is what most people say,
which is what I would have said --
"I'm loving you."
because it was an ongoing action,
not just a passive state,
because she was loving me
while I was reading, or cooking.
it wasn't something like
"how do you feel?" "I feel good."
"what do you love?" "you, dear."
-- no.
no, loving is a verb, an act,
one that takes patience and time
and perseverance.
"I'm loving you", she said,
and her tone was casual or
almost indifferent, maybe,
as if she had said "I'm cleaning
the house", as if it should follow
"what are you doing today?",
she said the words as if they were
positively ordinary, but they weren't.
people tend to ask
"do you smoke?" or "do you drink?"
or "what do you believe in?"
-- habitually, passively --
and she said
"I'm loving
(and loving and loving)
you."