Your Silence

My heart beats in a thousand pieces, scattered across the four corners of the earth.

You, and you, and you, and you. You who left me, you who cherished, you who refused to hold on, you who denied.

A million white ravens with shaded crystal eyes erupt from my chest and fly away on the breeze of your breath.

I held you, and I sent you away.

What is this small terror within me, this girl who refuses to open this ribboned box chock-full of a substance I can no longer remember.

In a field of lavender I lay down, dreaming of the days when I was a rose.

I was never a rose.

Ineffable strummings of a metal string.

Pain, pain, pain, pain, it pours out all my failures. I cannot tend to them.

In the center of the storm you embraced me, and in my hysteria I bit your neck.

Who can love me? Who?

The structure of the sound ringing in my ear is a conch shell, an endless spiral of harmonics, enveloping and enveloping one another.

I heard you, and I turned you away.

Deep in my melancholy I wrote you thirty-one songs, each profession, each emotion falser than the last.

Where are are aubades? Our truths, do they stay or do they rise to a place we cannot go?

God, I hope you find me here.

In this hole, a grey mess of nothing, disappear with me, I fade into you.

Fade into black, into an Erebus, the forgotten corner of an empty world.

I cry for you. You, who have never once heard me.

They trail slow behind us, our shadows. Dreading the dawn, too afraid to change anymuch more.

I tend to you, the bluest chrysanthemum in my garden, and pluck the milkweeds of your sorrow.

I am afraid of you, and that is what draws me here.

When will the truth shatter across the dawn?

Won’t you stay? Won’t you stay? Won’t you stay? Won’t you stay?

I met you beneath the torii gate, sunlight glinting off the laquer.

You smiled at me, and in that moment I felt the gravity of fate.

I understand, I understand, I understand, I understand.

They hold me back, the memories. They tug at the hems of my skirt, they scream at me to stay.

I lay down, my feet splayed like cold spider webs.

I surrender to God because I can’t surrender to you.

And I surrender to you because I surrender to God.

I take the four corners of my bedsheet and tie it in a knot over my head. I will stay crouched here until you come back.

Posterity wraps its fingers around my neck. As I choke on its inevitability, I smile at the sun.

You, who have never once sung me farewell.

The light ceases to glow, the light ceases to glow.

In the shadow of your Erebus sits a single flower, the lily of God.

Its four petals are enough to rend my heart, to take my pain and make it nothing.