Silence (edited)

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 I'd stroked her finger tips she'd tremble and shed a tear. I didn't mind though. Tears were a lovely thing, a wanted thing. I'd felt... consoled.
And when she didn't talk the fist day, the second day... I'd understood. There was no need to say what we 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. Her hand in mine, a simple walk 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. Wonder but never ask. There is no need to form the words that will only echo oddly around our intertwined hands, almost more real than that which around it spins and scoops. And then where will I be? You and I will loose ourselves to a reality more stark than the one in which we live. We'll fade away. And I don't want that.

I like where I am. I don't want to loose this place. This cell.

And so the words she wants to speak are merely muffled, muddled, incomplete. Her lips move but no sound comes out. There's something wrong with her. There must be. Sometimes, it seems like everyone's crazy except me.

And I remember those eyes, so confused and deranged, that mad man that girl, when I tried to tell her. All I wanted to do was tell her. But if I did, I knew that like our intertwined hands, we would disappear, surrender to the reality that was greater, more real than us both.

I'm scared of her. Those understanding eyes are too wide to be real, a part of the uncanny valley that haunts my dreams. 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. It's hard to contort my hand this way, like licking my elbow with my own tongue, and when she reacts in surprise, fear, to my touch, its like the shock of waking up to something cool and soft touching the palm of my hand and realizing in horror that just me, just my finger, go back to sleep. And i do as I stare at the concrete wall of my cell.

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, almost reflective though, from sweat and grime, 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, touching the sweat and grime floor beneath me, and her, in a limbo of space that traces sideways along the floor as if a reflection of me.
And there is silence.

I wait.

And then a voice, weak and lovely, saying, "Why do you blame me?"
It's tangible and echoes thusly, softly, trespassing outside its source, outside of 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.