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Touch me while I’m breaking, before the pieces slip through the cracks and are gone for good.
Smile if you see, eyes focused —
Am I here?
Let go when the fissures are too broad to cross, when the sounds that emerge demand too much, and the costs too great.
All the world’s silences hit in the odd hours:
hours between the solace of escape, of sleep, of nothingness, and the return to consciousness;
hours between five of the good day, the happy day, the productive day,
and six, when it falls apart, a tiny rotting corpse and not enough tears to make it right;
hours between dimly overcast and rushing twilight and the emptiness of nightfall.
In the silence the pieces fall without notice.
Little taps of a hammer wielded by a child’s heart that cannot forgive.
Pain is sharpened on guilt and shame.
One day it might be gone.
