There is silence in the void of emotion that carries what was into what will be and in the space between the event and the reaction is where power crackles and coils and the smell of electricity burns memories into every future that you force through your past.

I can't. I won't. It has never been in me to be.

She sat in the driver's seat without a place to go because she was lost without his directions.  The playlist wasn't on repeat and the car fell silent but the oppressive weight on her ears that screamed into the quiet with the pressure of his expectations was pushing in ways she felt but couldn't understand. Then it dawned on her that there's an app for that and it's up to her to decide, and then to go.

I'm not enough, or maybe I'm too much.

I waited for tears to fall and wash away what was building so terribly inside of me . . . but they didn't come.  The ache and moan and hollowed brokenness are not enough to mourn.  I feel it but it's not as bad as fear told me it would be. Was it a real loss if you aren't lost?

That idea is too boring to me to flesh out for you. No one else will care.

My ass is on that line, but I'm squirming uncomfortably.  I won't stay where I intend to be.  I won't sit where the meaning is meaningful. It's too much to commit to my words having meaning you might want to understand, and yet the emotions brew dangerously close to the surface and the rage I quieted wants release in words that build up and crescendo into the deepest parts of your mind.  I don't need to change the world, but I need to make you feel and I need your reaction. One word at a time, a series of paragraphs.  I won't stop.

You don't have time to do what you think you want to do.

I paid the bill for your growth because I put my money where my faith is.  You get my time, and my efforts and my belief and I'm lacking in time because I refuse to look at the belief I have in you that I've displaced out of my reach for myself.  But today I'm being selfish and taking whole minutes for myself to do what I want to do because I'm learning what that looks like and things are shifting because I have enough to give enough to the things I believe in.

There's silence between us in the feelings we refuse to express.

We talk and dance around the obvious in favor of the inane because there are feelings and emotions that are brewing and burning with a desire to be expressed fully and fearfully and with wondrous transparency.  We look and verbally dance around what will not be said because being children together is easier than what you would expect from grown folks.

The duty of living falls silently and solidly on us.

When we were young we had dreams and made plans that were bigger than the plans.  Bills became burdens and our ideas were pushed by the ideals and we were forced to face the work that is required in doing what we aspire to be.  But we live together and know we share a burden that we didn't want.  There is silence in the work day because the cost of duty is our ability to complain.

We statue ourselves silently so our fears can speak for us.

When the first tower fell there was shock, but the dawning realization of intent fell with the second one.  In fall of 2001 I was on bedrest with my first pregnancy and had no other option than to obsessively watch.  With the rest of the world, I watched lives fall apart and the confidence of a nation buckled to the sweeping desire for rage and retribution. It's fingers slid insidiously into the psyche of a generation who hasn't experienced national peace since then.  My children haven't seen what complete peace without national conquest looks like. I vaguely remember it myself. I sat with my first child in my belly, wondering about the legacy I was nailing to his future.  It was a moment where true faith in the inherent good of human nature stood silently alongside my fear and held me accountable to my individual decision to not cash that check of terror that was handed to us.  I do not live in fear, nor has that ever been a viable option to me.