you don't know me as well as you believe you do. there were so many things that i never told you for fear of your misunderstanding me. when i told you that and that and that, i was only telling you a bit of the whole truth for fear that you would not understand my meaning.

i wanted, so many times, to tell you that i never stopped thinking about you. about the time that you said that and i said the other thing... but i never had a chance to tell you. so, on a million pieces of paper i wrote what i really meant and read them when i was alone in the dark of my room. even then my hands shook because i was afraid that you would somehow know the next time we spoke, so i tore the pages up and threw them in the deepest part of the wastebasket, unread by you.

i wanted, so many times, to speak the unspeakable, perhaps in a tongue not your own. in a tongue not my own, but the language of silence where the real words are spoken. but i don't know that you would have understood me then or even now. so i sat in the corner of the couch that i always occupy, breathing softly in the spoken silence of two people who don't always say what they mean.

i wanted, so many times and even now, to look over at you and tell you exactly what i was feeling because i thought that i would die without ever saying what i meant, but instead, i sat and simply smiled the way that i always do. and you smiled, the way that you always did and the silence passed - unspoken by either of us.

and now, i am engulfed in a silence spoken so loudly that my ears are growing deaf and it is only my hand that can speak what needs to be spoken.