I will push and pull
for reasons undisclosed.
Could you still love me?
I am fragmented
and torn across time.
Can you see it yet?
I know it doesn't show
in the beginning,
and I always think
this time
I will overcome it.

Obsessive.
Obsessive.
Passive.
Obsessive.
Obsessed.

I obliterate these thoughts,
leaving them like torn leaves
flailing in the wind,
and some source,
undoubtedly of the past,
always replants these seeds of doubt,
their roots not yet destroyed.

It's in my pathology.
These neural pathways have
grown stronger and stronger
despite my effots
to dig them up with words,
poison them with reflection,
and hack them with an ax of will.

Still

it's not enough.

We cannot write silence.
The beats.
The pause.
The breath.
The way it aches
and persists

and begs that,

if only for a moment,

our consciousness is only a whisper.
our bodies,
our lips,
the air that passes through falling chests
and stillness.

A melody of emotion.
Sleeping in the quiet of a heartbeat skipped
a word lost to the wind.

The wickedness of reticence
Encapsulated in air and time.

The moment stretched too long.
Hesitation perpetuated in the grip of fingernails
pressed into palms.

We cannot write silence,
but we can try.

to find a way to immortalize emotion
to create space
in the ceaseless drone of words that speak and spin.

I cannot write silence. But I can write
tears and years
and the burn of long-stretched lies.

I can write goodbyes and hellos
And dozen ways to say
I love to hate you
Or
I hate to love you
and sometimes
I cannot tell the difference.
Silence.
The space I have upheld for myself.

I love to hate you
Heart.

I hate to love you too.

I cannot write silence.
But I know it.
and I have held it in my hand.

My waking time
in the narrowest part of the creek
chases spots in the shadows
a streak between bushes
thirsty tongue lapping green opal
cautious cotton on the fallen leaves
the priceless prowler in the morn mist
or in the dusk
the graceful glory
in the hinterland of my heart.