I have been silent for several minutes and you are polite enough not to ask why. You know by now that I will speak if I need to. You know by now that I can’t answer questions when I’m like this. I am trying to tell you that I am suddenly inexplicably deafeningly sad. There was warmth in me ten minutes ago and now there is nothing and I don’t know how to say that in a way that will make sense because it doesn’t make sense. All I know is that it takes a little more work to smile than it used to and I can’t quite get it to look real and I want to talk to you but it doesn’t seem like there is anything of interest in the world and god bless you for trying to pretend that nothing is happening but I am having a hard time hearing your words and it feels like everything is being felt by someone else a couple blocks away from me and I just can’t bring myself to care about them the way that I know that I am supposed to and I am trying to tell you that it is not your fault. It is no one’s fault. This is an effect without a cause. We were fine and then I wasn’t. We were fine and then I broke and now I can’t smile for you and this is not the story of how months of glacial erosion robbed me of my joy this is the story of 20 minutes in a kitchen that were fine until they weren’t. I am trying to tell you that I am mentally ill. I am trying to tell you sometimes this just happens. I am not saying anything because I can’t find words just yet.


“Does it bother you? When I get like this? Do you even notice?”

“I figure you’ll say something when you’re ready. You’d talk about it if you wanted to. It scares me sometimes, when I don’t know what’s happening or if I caused it.”

“No. You didn’t cause it. I’m not sad about you. Or anything, really. This is just a thing that happens sometimes. It’s not really about anything, it just is.”

“Okay. That’s all I need to know. Come here.”

You pull me in. You wrap the blanket around us. You bury me close and stroke my hair and don’t ask me to explain or justify my feelings you are content just to let them come and I feel like crying but figure you have dealt with enough already. I am trying to remember a moment in which I felt this safe. I am trying to remember a time I was allowed to be gentle and weak and raw and open and honest and

I am trying to love you the best way a broken thing can and I am not very good at it but you are patient and soft and this will have to be enough.

This is the first time in years that I have felt like poetry.