#deepburnblue

I will bite my tongue.

It is the right move, and I know it, and I respect that.

I will want to say things like people do in important moments in novels and movies and television shows, things that are monologues only in technicality, a burning dialogue of eyes and actions. Words spoken quietly, into darkness, that make a masseter jump and a pair of listening eyes set in restraint. Words that are sent across the room to clenched fists and a shaking head. Words that sag shoulders.

I will want to tell you I don’t need anything from you, so you don’t have to be okay for me. You don’t have to be funny, and you don’t have to sound smart or clever. You can just be overwhelmed or lonely, you can feel heartbreak even though your heart hasn’t been broken. You can feel alone and be next to someone, you can feel rage and not tame it or chase it out of your head like you can outrun it if you just push hard enough.

I will want to offer to sit with you, in any iteration you feel like or not at all. To walk with you, literally or from far away on the phone. To listen, if you want to talk out loud and feel the release of saying things with the luxury of deep breath and full lungs. I know you never yell, but you can.

You’ll leave this silence here, conversation fading like a struck tuning fork whose note rings into ambient nothingness. And I’ll let you, because that’s the same as saying all of these things out loud, without asking for a response.

I will bite my tongue.