Respond.
Sometimes I wonder how I will respond. Will I be able to respond even when I have no form of words to speak? I enjoy the thought of speaking but my words spew out in silence.
They collect in corners, dust-bunnies of unspoken things, tangling beneath furniture no one thinks to move anymore. Sometimes you walk through them and they cling to your socks, invisible, and I wonder if you feel their weight with each step you take away from me.
I have practiced this conversation a thousand times in the shower, water drumming against tile like a standing ovation for a performance no one will see. My mouth moves. The steam writes elegies on the mirror. By the time I towel off, every perfect sentence has dissolved.
Tonight I saw a moth beat itself against the porch light until it fell, wings still making the shape of flight even in stillness. I understood something then about wanting so badly toward the light that you forget you have a body that can break.
Maybe that's how I will respond: not with words, but with the space I leave when I finally stop trying to be heard. A quiet so complete you'll have to fill it with the memory of my voice, with all the things you think I should have said.
And in that silence— my only eloquence— you might finally listen.