We played hide and seek in the dark
But we didn't talk about shadows
We swam together in the pool
But speak only in the shallows
You told me not to do what you do
but to learn and do better
Now I call out the truth
but they like the silent me better
Go say I'm the broken one
because I talk about my feelings
But we all grew in the poison,
I'm just the one healing

You say I pulled away.
You're right.
But before I left,
I withered beneath the weight of your storm.

I didn’t mean to become the silence
you dreaded waking up to.
But every slammed door,
every name spat like venom,
taught me how to become invisible.

You think I planned it —
as if my tattoos were eulogies for us,
my piercings an escape route.
No.
They were armor.
Each needle a promise to myself
that I still existed
underneath the noise.

I loved you.
God, I did.
When we laughed,
it felt like we’d invented language.
When we touched,
I thought the world forgave us.

But I was bleeding
while trying to bandage your rage.
And in the quiet after your anger,
I started to disappear.

I wasn’t waiting to leave —
I was hoping you’d notice I was drowning.
But you were too busy
trying to prove you were already underwater.

And I know my hands weren’t clean.
I bit back,
with sarcasm, with silence,
with withdrawal.
We hurt each other
because we didn’t know
how not to.

You were my home.
But I couldn’t survive the fires
you kept lighting inside the walls.

So I left.
And I still ache —
because I wanted us to grow,
not burn.

You staggered through the double doors,
a trail of red on bleached-out floors.
The night was humming, wet and mean,
your busted life in Trauma Green.

I clamped your vein, soft as thread,
and dared the gods to count their dead.
You lay there broken, no ID,
just blood and ache and urgency.

Your heart fell quiet
inside my hand,
as if it paused to understand.
Then breath returned in stuttered moans.
your chest arched up to meet my own.

The wound was sealed.
Your sigh came slow.
You could have left.
You didn’t, though.
The sweat still clung.
Your gaze went slack.
You pulled the gown and turned your back.

I saw you later, checkout nine:
frozen dinners, boxed red wine.
You seemed like someone death forgot,
barely awake, missing the plot.

You looked right through. You didn’t know
the hands that pulled you from below.
You don’t remember. I can’t forget
how thin the stitch, how deep the debt.

While she was reciting her poem
she wrote just minutes ago,
she spilled a great
piece of wisdom,

purely accidental of course,
as they are from those
who seem to conjure wisdom
from the air they breathe,
or from mere daily observation.

She poured it onto the whole electric scene
like hot cocoa in a child's winter dream.

Some gulped it, some were aware of it,
some glossed over it, some picked it up
and set it back free again,
some took it in their hands and stomped on it,
vaguely afraid of it.

But most just stared right back
at this wisdom.
No doubt,
the one passed down,
from the great minds
before her,

This invisible line
threaded together
trying to weave itself
back into human synapse
every hundred years,
shouting to be recognized
once more,
but stuck  
chained to the
shelves of history
and soft breathe,

that is until someone
plucks it from the
great landscape of silence,
another entry point,
from which she had
undoubtedly  
terrained.

I’m waiting more, enjoying more
of the space between -
words, notes, breaths -
the space I don’t need
to step into, giving it up
for another.

I’m watching more, listening for
what comes next.
Not anticipating but enjoying
the not-yet.

Who knows?
God may speak again.

When Silence Stays

A small, dimly lit room. Two chairs, facing slightly away from each other. A window stage-left lets in muted grey light. Dust particles float in the still air. No sound and just the low hum of existence.

He – Hollow, reflective, withdrawn.
She – Worn, quiet, still carrying embers of feeling beneath her restraint.

He sits with hands clasped, elbows on knees, staring at the floor.
She stands at the window, unmoving, her back to him.
SHE (softly)
You haven't said a word in hours.
HE
You're asking me why I'm silent?
I don't know… maybe because there's nothing left worth talking about.
We’ve stopped living out of desire…
Now we just exist from a lack of death.

SHE
(turns halfway toward him)
It’s as if we’re waiting for something…
Something to come and end us.
But even the ending keeps getting delayed.
The scene stretches on,
like a film that should’ve faded to black… but doesn’t.

HE
Do you remember how we used to feel pain?
Real pain, sharp, loud, alive?
We’d scream, and somehow the screaming helped.
Like the pain was real because it echoed.
Now even the pain has gone cold.
As if we’re forbidden from enjoying it.

SHE
Not even crying over it anymore.
(teeth clench subtly)
We’ve started to stifle the pain…
Stifle the scream…
Stifle life.
But we don’t die.

HE
(quietly, almost a whisper)
And that’s the curse, isn’t it?
It’s harder than death
to keep living,
while nothing in your lives.

She finally turns to him.
There is silence between them, not empty and but swollen, like a storm that never comes.

SHE
Do you think we’ll ever feel again?

HE
I don’t know.
Maybe we feel too much…
and this is what happens when the soul gets tired of carrying it.

SHE
Then maybe silence isn’t the absence of words…
It’s what’s left when life leaves.

A long pause.
Light fades slowly until the stage is only grey and still.

End Scene…