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Lately, that’s what living feels like also it’s been raining a lot lately but I don’t mind get diamonds tossed into my hair even if they’re temporary and cold.

There are so many stains, the eye does not know where to settle except in space—past people.

My father taught me silence.

First, it was the silence of adoration, of moments of sitting mute from happiness. Under seven years old. My father used to blow dry my inky hair that I inherited precisely from him as I sat with his legs flanking me. Talking interrupted the black noise of the blow dryer so I used my arms to convey whenever he lowered the hot air too close or when I felt my hair was sufficiently baked.
He would let me have mouthfuls of his coffee ice cream when my mother was looking away too. It was our secret because my mother was outlandishly convinced that any caffeine would stunt my growth irreparably. She was always heart-wrenching-ly anxious about small things. But the ice cream kept me still and otherwise complacent wherever we went after we left the ice cream parlor. I still grew. Taller than my mother easily.

Then, there was the strain. After we moved continents, the silences began to fill with adulthood seeping in. The lack of words was more accusatory than peaceful. How dare my parents be parents, I seemed to often think. I found silences less wearying than talking, especially when we uprooted ourselves again from the complex Pacific Northwest that I dearly loved to elsewhere. Gone were the smells of petrichor mixed with lush pine, the patchwork of moody greys in skies, and most of all, everyone who grew with me from my childhood to teenagehood.

After the next move, my silences became armor. Speaking seemed to feel as if it were an unfairly divided chore between us or surgeon tools slicing knowingly to the where the pain lay. I could find blame in all things, if moved to do so. My father would repeat, “what happened?” to me, while I would respond “I don’t know” or with a stare. The latter pains me even now to recall.

As years passed, our silences became salves that we can carry cleanly anywhere for each other’s sake. I grew more. Learned more. Wised up. Emerged from my rigid chrysalis happily. We both know how many words silences condense without losing any of them. I lean in to show that I understand. I smile to reply.

I will make it through the bricks. I will see the clear horizon. But a part of me fears that I’m setting myself up for desiring something that life has proven to not be true. So I punch the wall just to bleed. The pain, more important than the clarity. Close to death I know I’m alive.