I'm wondering about the shape of silence—about the form of isolation and loneliness?
What is it constructed from?
How does the world conspire to bring it about?
How does the world pull back from us: first with a hurt, then a forgetfulness, then a neglect, then a partition?
How does this terrible separation take place?
What is in that gulf between us and another that makes it so impenetrable?
Is it solid emptiness?
Or is it assembled from the leftover pieces of previous knowing?
Is it an emptiness built from the forgotten kisses, the lost embraces, the loving words that have now evaporated into the mists of the unknown?
Whatever it is, it is unbreachable.
There is no crossing over from one side to the other—there is no hand reaching across the gulf to pull us over to safety; not even the suspicion of it.
This pit of separation is as deep as any, as black as any, as wide as any.
And we stand alone on its edge, staring into the nothingness that it composes, watching our tears falling down into the abyss and disappearing into the unfathomable, silent depths of what it is.
