You listened. But when I spoke, the thoughts I could express were not what I wanted you to hear. Carefully selected pauses in phrases with allusions to shared memories had been telling you all along. The pauses leaked into growing pools of silence that had their own meaning between us, for what could be louder than those spaces when the Gods speak? How often is the attempt at articulation only superfluous digression and the struggle for eloquence merely wasted clichés? How underestimated is the power of a glance? I valued subtlety and the elegance of brevity, and I knew you knew how to read between the lines. Then we began to sense the soundless interludes had become a pernicious gap in communication, a growing muted pleading for something more, a connection, which unheard became frustrated, violent and uncontrollable. What I thought was wordless comprehension was but hopeful endurance, wearing out. Front to front I thought my hands could link our thoughts, but sleeping back to back, expectations faltered that you could understand.
Now, alone waiting for dreams I wonder;
why would you speak to someone that way?

You drop a word here or there,
a statement or a question,
or maybe both or neither.
What fears worm back and through to eat
the development of what
you really meant to say
or meant to ask by saying
a thousand words that missed their mark.