grandeur—
starlight trickling
into sea; she nodded
beside me, gracefully.
she fell into never,
beside me.

'her' as whispered praxis:

her
stormy
hair

her
highland
shoulders

brush me in
wind.

silence
flows differently
than quiet —

she trickles
like a spring creek;
he tumbles
like warm sand.

orchestral
rows, fading
one by one
into higher and higher
blankness. it's an impossibility
that you'll look up there and meet
my eye. we're not starlight, after
all; you don't look at us with wonder.

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.

should that i—
fall from being nowhere

and time: so restless
to leave your purple
and blue, spattering,

echoing spring
rain.