I love her. I taste them, roll their shape across a tongue unused to talking about such things. I love her. I love Spencer. I try to get used to their heaviness in my mouth, to rub down the sharp edges of their meaning. Say it, Ashley. I open my mouth. I lick my lips. I have been rendered mute. It’s a new virus, this mutation burning into my cells with every beat of my heart, a disease I thought myself inoculated against. Love. Love has rendered me mute. Love, still, wants to be spoken of.

I love her. I can’t stop the thought, this inner mantra, any more than I could stop the rush of blood in my veins. How could a truth so self-evident escape me for so long? Was it there all along, a familiar graffiti on the wall directly in front of me, unintelligible to the untrained eye? I am learning a new language. I grasp the meaning. I cannot shape the words yet.

I love her. This love has rendered me mute. The rules change when you move from the sidelines and join the game, Ash. Very well. I have been rendered mute. The words crowd my throat, fighting to get out. I cannot use them.

I look at my hands. So steady now. Very well. My speech has failed me? I will learn the language of signs. I will shape the letters with my hands, write out sentences with my fingers. If she can’t understand me, I will teach her the Braille of my love. We will learn the shape of the new language together.

I love her. I let the fever take me.

~vi~

I can’t do this.

~vii~

When I look at her, I know what weakness is. I can feel it in my bones, this lack of strength to look away, to resist, this dearth of determination to walk away from her. They taught us this in biology, a lesson I was bored enough to pay attention to, the self-preservation instinct. We all have it hard-wired in our brains, to flee in front of danger, all impulse, no thought. And here I am, paralyzed with fear. Immobile with want. A sequined tight-rope walker caught between what she wants and what she fears, wire sharp and slippery underneath the balls of her feet, seeing no comfort on either end of the rope.