I have felt silence like boulders against my chest. It is not words that affect us, it is the lack thereof. I mean we can listen to someone who doesn't love us tell us that they do, and we can listen to someone who hates us tell us that they don't, but at the end of the day it is not those regurgitated thoughts that keep us awake at night; no it is the thoughts that remain thoughts and never turn themselves into words. Silence is heavy. It is so heavy that the breathing of an impassioned lover who has lost all passion speaks louder than the words they utter. It is so heavy that you can hear hearts break behind the thinness of paper hospital walls; you can hear the breaking of sternums and ribcages as caskets are lowered in the thinness of paper ground. He can lay beside you at night and whisper in your ear sweet nothings about how you are his and he is yours when you both know he's silently whispering to the owner of that lipstick on his collar, but the silence of his dreams are what made you open that wine bottle. The silence of his "I have to work late" made you not want to put it down. It is not his words that didn't come home last night and it is not his silence. It is him. And he is what created the silence in you. He is what took the words from you. This is for you. This is for me. This is for the silence and all that it encompasses. I am broken but I am whole. And it is him that taught me to tear myself apart so I could learn to put myself back together. This is for him.