Tall
First the cadence of your sleepy voice, then your brilliant laugh rings through me like a bell, and suddenly I don't move at all.
I've made the air between us shrill with silence because I am crying, and the shock of it has swiftly cut up your expression.
"I wish,"I tell you, but that is all.
I wish I could make you understand. But you can't know the depths without opening the door. If I screamed into the darkness, you couldn't comprehend the echoes.
I'm afraid.
Yet you listen and softly hold my hand. You speak gently. You say things... so impossibly at ease with the person in front of you.
I can't imagine how.
You have always appeared standing tall.
You don't know what it is to be ripped apart, and slowly stitched together with kindness, drawn in by love and made anew.
You make me feel tall just because you are here.
I don't say a thing.
I just love you.