There is Silence
There is silence
I am at a party. I notice him with the large afro, standing off to the side, laughing, as the extrovert of his group dances, carrying the life of the party. When his eyes finally meet mine, the noise is drowned out. The noise in my head, the noise from the speakers, the noise from the people around, all zapped into this tunnel becoming Chinese fingers that stretch between my head and his.
There is silence
In the way his body cups mine. Behind us, a bonfire. Before us, the beach with its lazy waters licking the sand and stretching back out to meet the pink orange sunset. In this moment, there is nothing more we could want, nothing more we could be. We are good as is and I am enclosed within his arms, his breath, his being. We are a universe within the universe, enfolded in its womb, except there is no pushing to anywhere. Here, there would be no crying, no spanking, no shocks at arriving at another state. We are at the height of ourselves. At the height of us. It is peaceful. It is glorious.
There is silence
We have been screaming, trying to one up the other, if not in words, then in volume. His statement is beyond a one up. My silence comes from the tunnel where I am quickly receding into the shadows as they whisper every insecurity I have battled about us. I watch my destruction as his words play in an infinite loop. His silence comes from the shock, the pain, at uttering the unutterable. How do you apologize for a truth so terrible?
There is silence
It is fragmented, existing even in our speech, marked by borders of the eggshells we dare not step on. The white elephant exists and we look at it daily, but how do we reconcile the parts we can touch with the full picture of the elephant that once allowed us to be whole? The tunnel embraces me more and more, the doubts showing themselves true in signs I pick up and throw in his face passively. It is in the way he does not respond to this aggressiveness, receding into his own tunnel, a mark of apology, as though the burden of causing this is double the hurt I am experiencing.
There is silence
The night stretched out between our distant bodies on the bed. Both of us, wrestling our demons, moving to other rooms within the house as though it would lessen the burden within us. The restlessness pushing us around and around till we both arrive at the kitchen at this odd time when witches are at the crossroads speaking into mirrors. We are looking, one at the other, in the sunken eyes, seeing our cracked reflections. We both are here, choking because the love we feel has grown stagnant, unable to move to a place that will give us air, give us life. It has gone so far from us, but maybe we can pick the pieces and work on this puzzle together. Maybe we can recreate us.
There is silence
In the morning that comes. We sit side by side, breathing for the first time in a long while. Going back is not an option we have anymore- it will only take us back to the stinking tunnels. We want the light, to be with the universe, breathing fully, with 2 different sets of lungs making us one, instead of the half thing we have been struggling to pick breath with. There will be more fragmented silences to comes, more hurts to come, but this is us for better or for worse and we will face them in whatever form.
