No words, no words, or none of the kind that need another, no back and forth of dialogue from where I am, somewhere between awake and asleep, a shuffling bewilderment, dawn that promises to come but does not come. I’ve no words here, no words for this place, no way to describe or explain, no justification. My eyes, my eyes, they ask questions I can’t voice, they look out of my face like dough, my flesh like bread, and there’s a kind of searching I can’t name, a sense of loss that the face in the mirror isn’t me. The tasks stretch before me like days, they are a thing I understand, I bend myself to them. The written word does not break the vow of silence, the secrets can be mumbled, I share them without sharing. I’m lost, wandering my house with the bread rising in the oven, I’m lost. Some shadow calls my name, some darkness clings to me from sleep. I dreamed of dragons, of a world flooded, darkness that moved upon the water. I dreamed of dragons. The bees are in the basil. The child is in the womb. The weeks lie before me with all their tasks. I’m here, trying to find my way to your world, the key that turns the lock and yet, and yet, I want to stay. This is not air that I’m breathing, all my words are in my hands, in the touch of my fingers. I’m caught between worlds, on the other side of the glass, out in the night where all things are naked and only themselves, out where the dogs cry and the moon is bone white in the sky. I could shake my head and shake the shadows from my eyes like dew, step over the threshold into the world of words, reassure you with a smile. I could take up limb, tongue, conversation without sacred touch. But I think I’ll stand here a little longer and listen to the other world. The sound that hearts make, yearning, even yours child, throat unstrung with harpstrings yet, in a place where longing is the only language.