just like black is every single color
combined and creating something new,
our silence
is every single little thing we are not saying to each other
coming together and creating
lack.
in a car the silence is not so noticeable,
we are able to attend to things like
birds on top of lampposts
and the tires on the road
but at night
we cannot save each other from the verbal death we are creating.
and that's the real problem here, is that
we create this black hole:
we manifest it, we produce it, we engage with it
and it sucks us dry.
at night we lie in bed side by side
and for a moment we both feel it--
but soon you are snoring,
and oblivious to the fact that i am lying face-up
wondering what the people in the apartment above us are doing
or if, since we live on the ground floor,
anyone ever stops and just looks in the window
or even wondering what, in the silence of the next night,
i will be lying awake and wondering.
your voice is an amalgamation of my attraction,
and each syllable is a breath that i take in:
your laughs are oxygen, your sighs my excess of dioxide.
some nights i mimic your posture,
our bodies exactly aligned but four inches apart and not touching.
in words we are the same,
the commercial inventions of the tv and radio
overshadowing anything that kant or kierkegaard ever said,
much less your domestic partner.
because that is what this silence does to us,
domesticates us, lies us down in bed at night and says
you may snore
or you may wonder these wonders and never say them aloud.
in the morning i will get glasses out of the cabinet,
pour juice and
find my car keys
and the black hole, that swirls between us like
some malevolent vacuum of the light that our love creates,
will suck the interest right out of us
and we will only make small talk
about how we slept and what the weather is like
before heading to separate days.
and i will lean back at my desk
and count tiles,
and wonder
about all the things that we might say to each other
if only the silence was not so encompassing--
if only the words did not mangle each other
just as they were clearing the roof of my mouth,
if only the words did not run together quite so thoroughly
and create this conglomerate silence
of lack.