you write “rejection” without
skipping a beat: your biggest fear;

mine of fires & spiders & being buried
alive (i may not be there yet).

we start in the sun and fragment
as the day lingers, hang with the fog later

as silences grow comfortable on their own
and the air, stopped in your lungs, turns cold.

in the end it is heavier
and my silence
is heavier still:

“really,
i think, i don’t
want to disappoint
(you).”