the voice of rot.

waking up next to her, watching her rouse from a sleep I knew was a pain to be stolen from, what I felt didn't have a syntax. language relies on the other person sharing the sentiment. you draw a line between the word, your meaning and their experience. without context a word is just a dumb sound. a lump of rot. and your voice would just be the voice of rot. the river spring of dead sentiment. that is why I could not say that I loved her.


the night before, we'd drunk a throat-full of wine. dried our vocal chords on plumes of cigarette smoke. we played the game of flirting, rallied to our intent and, on reaching out to each other, we'd stretched clear of sex. wordlessly we'd fallen into each other and, wrapped-up in each other's limbs, we'd fallen into bed. instead of sex, we met under a cave of blankets, kissed briefly, and only at the neck; then we were left with each other.


perhaps what needed to be said was too hot on the tongue. some incantations can set the body aflame. in any case, all things said cannot be unspoken and perhaps what we'd wanted to say we'd felt was the other's privilege to speak. to look back on the moment we'd confessed to each other. look back and celebrate the anniversary of our honesty. instead we were too timid and all our talk, the night before, of being true and honest and open, was just that... talk. in bed we kept our lips free to speak and said nothing.


small-talk is the art of skinning meaning from our words. making a sentence as light as air, forgiveable nonsense. nonsense makes fun of honesty. hyperboles the narrative. nonsense is an expedition into the blank space on the map. a way of claiming land we need no army to conquer. in that way that no country owns the poles, the sea, or space. to say that we are exploring, is to admit we own nothing of the land we touch. instead of invading, we go adventuring. possession in the sense of inhabiting, rather than owning. later comes the process of naming. of claiming, calving and setting up our borders. later comes the emperor, the king. later comes the war to hold land. the only free land left, the no-man's-land between trenches. perhaps I held on to the need not to lay claim to her. if we could have managed nonsense, we'd have been saved.


instead we laid there, not speaking. we watched the sunlight come out, bathe us and then retreat. we watched leaves bud and flourish, then turn royal and drop. we did not eat, for it would have meant our mouths were too full to utter a syllable. we did not leave each other's side that whole time. we thinned out until our bones were no longer just a suggestion of form. our skin tightened and began to rupture with bed-sores. and we held on to each other. and no words came. and we died there. alone.