#recognizingthevoiceless

all that is left of you is tethered to a tremor.

your absence widens, and keeps on widening until we are finally separate.

the gulf between us is a star-fed river.

the gulf between us is a light-starved chasm.

I watch you convulse, collapse into yourself.

you, a soft nebulous shadow that grows warm and bright, incandescent, from a seed.

so quiet. so very quiet.

you spin away in the vacuum of space. pulse light. scintillate morse code answers.

i hear the silence.

i hear everything you want to say.

Embraced by a soul that knows your light and your deepest darkness.

Reveling in the acceptance of a heart so strong and large,

It can contain your unmeasured own,

Offered with such grace and generosity of spirit,

That you finally feel you've come home.

e.v.e.

when we were girls we were taught that if you just loved the beast enough, looked past the dripping fangs, the claws curled around a heart you were certain was good beneath it all - if you held a little more faith, stayed soft enough, malleable enough, resilient enough - that the spell he was under would be broken and you would live long enough to see the beast become the man you were promised; your reward for loving so blindly and wildly - and so i drank my poison like a good little miss every last d r o p we're feigning fables now, but not really. it's a tale as old as time. so we sit in our gilded cages and carriages of copper and wait. wait while the beast clips our wings, and the bars that once kept us safe, the bars we mistook for devotion, now hold us captive. until the clock strikes midnight and the carriage remembers it was always a pumpkin, while you're standing in a pool of your own blood, cutting your feet on the same glass slippers you were once all too willing to wear.

and you cannot be surprised when the fairy tale buries you in a shallow grave.

because he showed you who he was from the beginning.

the teeth were not a curse.

the claws were not a hex.

A comrade writes:

"L’shana tova to Claudia Sheinbaum and no one else.

If I'm right,

it was all worth it

to have loved you

so much.

If I'm wrong,

it was all worth it

to have loved you

so much.

(I'm sorry,

I'm so

You

protect

yourself

by

keeping

apart

from

the

crushing

heartlessness

of

the world,

freed

of

the need

to

be

so