Hush
He was the quiet one, the one that drew me in with his electrically silent love. His mouth never moved, but when he looked at me, I watched his emotion flow from the pit of his stomach and drip from his tongue like waterfalls of flapping wings. He was like my silent sound; he spoke volumes without volume. He could write too, god damn could he write. He collected phrases between pages of leather journals, as he listened to the sharpening of syllables and cutting of verbs. He was a poet, an author, and as a lover of words, he made me feel like I was floating. I used to be a foolish girl, scoping out compliments and searching for pick me up’s, and boys who would use language and lies to help me believe I was at least a fraction of perfection.
I was young when I met him, and still a sponge, still an eclectic individual, looking for something to complete the noisy world, in which I found myself trapped. We never lived together; we met for morning meals, and afternoon coffee. We would sit and stare at one another, as he’d suck ideas from the left side of my brain, and we’d sit, listening to each other’s silence. His love for me wasn’t an action, or an emotion, but rather an ability. He was able to love me, and that was good enough.
I provided for him, a railing to toss his failure over, and ideas, to entangle his brain and rob him of sleep at night. I provided for him, a little bit of reality; I was his something quirky, something a little off the wall, but something that could sit, would sit, and listen to everything he would never say.
Communication was up for interpretation. We knew every part of one another, and I could tell you his favorite sandwich and what he took in his coffee, and how that depended on the time of day, and day of the week. I could tell you that he was quiet, and I could say confidently, that he was in love with me.
There were a few foggy nights in November that he brought me home with him, after a lovely evening of slurping Italian noodles, and sipping expensive wines. There was romance, and lust, and silent love, as usual, but late at night when he fell asleep beside me, I’d heard him humming in his sleep. It was as though the colors of the day would release themselves through a quiet tune in his dreams. His songs wrapped around my ears on those foggy lustful nights, and my love for the simple hum, pulled at my heart, as it seeped through his lips. Those nights didn’t allow for much slumber, but that was okay. He wrote me letter’s in those songs; he wrote me letters every time our eyes met.
I lay awake on those nights imagining all the ink in the world, pooled in, around and between the stars. I imagined all the letters that could be written, would be written, and should be written. I was a lover of words, and even though his lips never moved, and he never filled my closet with physical words on paper, and poems, and lyrics, he was a poet, an author, and he made me feel like I was floating