I have been silent.
I have been silent not for loss
Or mourning
For those drag words from me
With or without my consent.
I have been silent because I am trying to be
Gentle
In love
When I am a thunderstorm made flesh,
A hurricane,
A seismic wave of passion and pain.
Inside
I burn
And it has been a long time
Since I have loved so deeply
As to press my sizzling hands to my own stomach
Just to keep another person from burning their fingers on the love I hold beneath my skin.
I have been silent
But I have not been extinguished-
Far from it, I have risen.
I have gone blue and white with heat.
I have wandered through the blackened trees in the ghostly calm of the night
And kindled them to flames with my palms.
I have left embers
Shifting and sighing in my footprints
And the earth has learned a new name to score into its stone and treebark when I travel through the darkness
Searching for a rest I will not find.
And there is joy in this,
There is such joy!
Although the heat presses,
Although the light licks at my ankles when I wade too far into my own heart's dreams.
I leave joy in these silent places, black and velvety and slumbering in the night-
I wake them
I wake them because I have been woken
And my heart has become something that melts
Something that burns
Something that hungers and consumes
And glows with shimmering reds and golds no matter how tightly I curl around it and hush its hissing whispers.
I leave joy because I can't contain it
And it reaches roots into the ground with every step I take-
A fearful joy,
A joy that knows its hunger
Will be its starvation.
A joy that breathes light and grasps at shadows
Because that is all it knows how to do.
A joy that turns its face up to the rain
To feel a moment's peace and cooling clarity.

Oh, I may have been silent
But I have not been quiet.

VERSE
The path we're on won't mean a thing unless we have success; they're always breathing down our necks.
I don't want us to be the kind of people whose lives are a chore, the ones that we'd ignore with their forced intimacy.

PRE-CHORUS
While we do have fun, when it's all said and done, what will we have left in reserve?

CHORUS
Don't waste your breath like lighter fluid and watch it burn out twice as fast. The rush to mature is just a race to a vision of the life you could have had.
When your imagination starts to rust, you'll just become a husk of your former self, and the fun we had will be an unpleasant reminder that it's coming to an end.

BRIDGE
With a foot in the grave, there's no point running wild.
Take advantage of the time you've got and the people by your side.
Don't let her get away.

In semitones it sang its morning song:
With perfect intonation did it sound
Each pitch-pure shaft of tone to richly confound
The staccato, choppy, chirpy, cheepy throng.
After this phrase of notes sung clear and strong,
A cadence-closing burst of trill unwound,
Shaken out taut and cinching, fast and round,
That lasted to the pure tones doubly long.
More beautiful singing I have never heard,
And yet was I inclined to doubt its worth.
I silenced my mind and listened to the earth,
And this was in the singing of the bird:
If all the world will be the way it is,
Be thankful for the bird that sings like this.

^ ^