Sometimes you are shell-shocked by the feel of a letter curved under the wrinkly skin where your fingers meet your palm. There is a tangy chew to the rounded edges of an O perfectly positioned three-sevenths of the way down a stack of letters, precariously close to the sharpened vertex of an S. At dark hours when there are only your thoughts and the weight of silence on your eyelids, you even think that you could die--right then and there--if you might only find a way to string together the perfect sentence with the exact proportion of words and letters clasped snugly around your throat.
Too many things lie between us, quivering, quaking in darkness like silence, or a laugh being shoved back down your throat. I press my cheek against the top of your head, your hair burning with the fidgeting fingers of the sun, listening to words that have no shape, or sound, or feel, just words that sit like fat potatoes between me and you, words that build up like gum under school desks and surround you. Tendrils, thin wispy letters, dig their way through your skin, overgrown bean plants. Everytime I try to pull one down, they rip at your skin and you cry out. Your silence floats like a feather, suspended below my mouth; when I speak it flutters with the fluctuations of my voice. Too many things hold us at a distance, two lone figures across each other, toes at the edge of a seemingly uncrossable gap. I heave stones into the darkness, my hand tight around yours, placing trust and love and faith and understanding like stepst...
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