And then, for the millionth time in the history of feeling, the heart surges, and absorbs the impact. Forgive me, for I have tried love and everything else, and neither seems to be enough. The rarefied atmosphere that comes with the beginning of love, the first moments of sadness slip out the window. And between the moments hangs a dark and heavy difference. The difference drifts away as moments add up. I will wait in my bedroom as I did before, a thought ajar, and you will slip into my room like a white tiger. I don’t need to suggest that I loved you the best. Still, I want you, just exactly like I used to. I live by the ocean and during the night I dive into it, down to the bottom underneath all currents and drop my anchor.

It’s the opposite of disappearing.

That’s the trouble with silence. Just to utter a single word would be to destroy the delicate fluency of silence. So many words get lost; they leave the mouth and loose their courage. Wandering aimlessly until they are swept into the gutter like dead leaves. On rainy days, you can hear their chorus rushing from the past. But it doesn’t sound good. It doesn’t sound like anything. The oldest feeling in the world might have simply been confusion.

I wish we could have met when we were young, when we didn’t know disappointment. That way, we couldn’t remind each other of it. We stood next to each other because that is what friends do in the presence of evil or love. On your porch, alone and loved. Sinking into our own skin. The one string harp, the shot in the dark. It may be the face I can't forget, a trace of pleasure or regret. I want to remember how it feels to say nothing together, to hold hands. My heart takes the beat, then something else. Nudges it. Alive again.