(fragment)

I won’t follow you, and you won’t follow me. Let us dance around each other: reaching, never touching, voices speaking words the other never hears. We have no words left; we never had anything else. (This is not a poem. I swear to you, on – I don’t know what you swear on. Let it not be me.) We are not dancing. We walk, skipping through snow to avoid each other’s footprints. We make paths the other will not follow.

We build labyrinths that are too easy to escape. We see each other without knowing. We know without knowing. I would say it is hard, but we have both known worse. I hold out a hand, knowing you will not touch. You fall, knowing I will not catch you. And no one else understands. And no one else can.

We have such capacity to destroy each other. And it hurts in the most wonderful way.