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.