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.