∴ love in silence

When I was eight, I found the six differences between two illustrations in the Sunday paper and sent it in for a prize: The Little Prince on tape. I wonder what happened to that tape; I loved the sad music someone chose as the soundtrack. I wonder what happened to my sister's Hans Christian Andersen picture books that she received when she was in the hospital for a severe case of mumps. The Matchstick Girl and The Little Mermaid were the saddest stories I read as a child. I think I read them before I was old enough to find out life isn't fair. Or maybe it's never too early to know this. I miss the smell of my mom's cooking. I miss the smell of the year's first summer night when suddenly, I can smell trees in a concrete jungle of 2.6 million. I miss sitting in the front of an 8-chair row in a class of 35 or 40 and being the only person who gets my teacher's sarcasm. I am proud of the girl I was when I was 17. I think that year, I was the bravest, most driven person I have ever been. Most stubborn, too. That was the year I lived in the same house with dad without saying a word to him for 11 months. It would have gone on longer, but I needed him to fill out the financial aid forms to apply to school in the US. That, and I felt guilty for making mom miserable for my stubbornness. It was the day after my birthday. Since then, I have learned to find peace in silence. The ultimate sign of true friendship for me is being able to spend time with someone in silence without the need to fill it. When I lost the first person I could love in silence to the whims of a long distance relationship, I put idiotic walls around my feelings. In each succeeding relationship, I would occasionally test myself with "If this person dumped you today, would you be all right?" and make sure the answer was always a resounding "Yes." Maybe all I ever wanted from love was to feel consumed by it without actually being consumed. Love is something different now. Love and I have found strength in vulnerability. We wrestle, bear our teeth, bite and show no pain even when we're hurt because we have finally fessed up that fuck it, we actually enjoy the battle. We lie in bed showing each other our battle scars, kissing each other's battle scars, biting around each other's battle scars. We imprint barely legible words on each other's body just by thinking them, and Love traces these words across my skin as it turns a darker shade of brown in the long awaited summer sun.