silence

Lately, she's been quieter.

She'd always been quiet, so mysterious and lovely, in the mousy blond head of hair that contained the beauty within. When you'd stroked her finger tips she'd tremble and shed a tear. You didn't mind though. Tears were a lovely thing, a wanted thing. You'd felt... consoled.
And when she didn't talk the fist day, the second day... You'd understood. There was no need to say what you both already knew. The specialness in the air need not to be verbalized and owned, to lose its actuality, the beauty that it was.

She'd smiled at me, hair flowing into backwards space, and inside, it almost hurt, this desire to make her safe and happy. Her full lips parting, and I was numb, and it not need spoken, or anything, or anything. I was paralyzed to the look in her eyes, distant and vague, yet piercing, alluring. We skipped that day, to school, her hand in mine, and it was like nothing else, before or after, any place and any time. Hair thrown backwards, messy and perfect in one. It was the perfect silence of a movie on mute. There need be no dramatic music or happy tune to effect the emotions that stood on their own.

But lately, she's been quieter, scrunching her nose, latching on to the sights around her with those cloudy eyes and heart. You see her own them in the reflection of her eyes, obscured by her crumbling demeanor, her eyebrows melting lower into shapes of pitiful... judgment, almost. And you wonder. Wondering but never asking. There was no need to form the words.

So why are there no words? The first was the last, and after that, nothing.

I'm scared of her... She isn't normal, I think. She isn't... I can't... describe. why I'm haunted. What is this feeling, this fear. I'm scared she's...

I'm stroking her fingertips. I'm tracing the bend of her arm, her warm bony shoulder. Up her slender neck, I trace, which is tensed from the intake of breath that reacts to my cold hands.
Where are you? I whisper.

The lips my fingers glide over quiver.

What are you? I ask more sternly, my finger entering her mouth.

There is no response.

Who are you!? I yell, grabbing her slender wrist with my other hand, her legs crumpling beneath her. She attempts to recoil, but lies whimpering on the cold concrete, and as I squeeze tighter I get angrier.

I fall to her level and secure her hands down, my fingers cuffs to her weakness. Her eyes are squeezed shut. Her right hand shakes as if to escape and then I see the ink, smudged like backwards letters onto the palm of my hand. I wrench her by her bony hand forward and stare.

Atop the paleness in spread ink it says:

you are good enough.

I pause for a moment, as there is nothing but the words ringing in my head sloping downward to force out of my mouth but I cannot open my lips I cannot open my eyes I cannot where am I where am I where am I

I begin to pull her up of the floor. We stand there, me on both feet, and her, in limbo of space.
And there is silence.

I wait.

And then a voice, weak and lovely, saying, "Why do you blame me?"
Her eyes are wide and as empowered as I've ever seen them. "I'm... I'm trying," she continues. An unnoticed tear drops onto the floor. The power dissipates with its fall.

Why can't you be strong? I need you to be strong. You have to fight back but the more I crush you the smaller you become. You don't have any fight you don't have any spirit you don't deserve you ca--

I let go of her wrists, and she flies back down onto the concrete.

"I blame you," I say, as I realize that this whole time, the quiet one's been me.