The storms of late summer did not snap and surge. The pepper plants did not kneel , weary, beneath the rains that came and came.
(or was it a drenched swoon of devotion?)
You didn't hurt my feelings in an otherwise unremarkable moment and I didn't react with silence.
I didn't cradle that silence like a delicate, damaged thing. (the bird that each of us tries to save— shoebox, eyedropper; our mothers knew it would die, but let us figure it out)
I didn't have myself convinced that no one had ever hurt like this.