I love our silences.

The unspoken

Current of thought flowing,

Enveloping the room.

My mind drifts, alighting

On various cool, smooth pebbles

Like a river feeling out its edges.

I love the serenity,

Sleepy and warm

That comes over me.

We trade our wordless sentences

For an eternity.

Before we part,

I cut you from myself like

A flower from a stem.

Because as much as I enjoy

This intricate ritual of ours,

I hate our silences,

Hate that I can’t let out all the

Horrible clogging things.

I choke on them,

I drown,

Softly,

In every “I miss you, I miss you, I _miss_ you”,

In every aching pause,

In every word that I traded for the ones

That I really wanted to say.

So I mention a stupid book

Or a stupid fly on the wall,

And you trade emptiness with me,

And I burn from the inside out

With unsaid, unsaid, _unsaid_.

I love you, and

You are so beautiful, and

Hold me. For the love of everything,

Please,

Please.

I need to know that I exist

Outside of my own head.

I am besieged within my own

Useless propriety, my own

Walls,

Carefully crafted.

I can’t speak to you.

Can’t even do this small thing,

This tiny thing—

I miss you,

And it’s spilling over.

And I cannot stay silent,

Cannot breathe.

I fold inwards,

A quiet crisis,

Painful but brief,

As I have done a million times before.

I leave feeling defeated,

Like I’m

Still waiting.

It’s killing me, love.

Our silence is

Killing me.