In your room, my laugh
is a bit too loud. I want
to hurl each sharp noise
at you, defiant, to prove
that I will not stay silent

to please you. Instead,
each sound falls flailing into
the open air between
us. I cannot retrieve it,
cannot save it from silence.

Even after I
shaped my farewell into words,
nothing disappeared.
My words had no purpose, they
had no art; they changed nothing.

Still, I laugh again,
laugh until the room is filled
with the breathiness
of my resolve. This noise is
my final mending, it is

the grasp I need to
go beyond the frailty
of feeling. With it
I close the gap between us;
I fill the space between words.