There needs to be noise, perhaps. I can’t stand silence in the car when I am alone. It’s never silent in my room, there’s always foot traffic out the window, rain, the city. Or that beautiful sound passing cars make; full, curvy, searing, a sound comets would want to borrow. I can’t stay in a kampung, I’ll go crazy. There needs to be something, always something. When I sleep the silence is perfect, but even more perfect with the noise of the fan.

Most of the time he is completely silent, and I’m ashamed to admit every time he is, I fill in the silence with even more noise, noise noise noise in my head. I wonder what he is thinking about, whether he loves me, and how he can love me if he doesn’t talk to me. I try to listen to the sound of our skin rubbing against each other when we hold hands, the sound we make when we kiss. Sometimes I think I hate, it, absolutely HATE how he is so silent, why doesn’t he have anything to say, and why doesn’t he have anything to say to me? Why can’t we be catching our breath on conversation topics, why does he say he loves me when he can’t stand how I need to always be movement, noise?

I think above all, I secretly resent the fact that he has silence in him. That it looks so good on him, and he is happy. He can be completely at peace with all that quiet while it inhabits him and taunts me and my endless search to punctuate a word, an action, with another. Then I think I want him even more, or at least want what he has. I wonder how long it took for him to acquire it, whether he looked for it the way I did when he was younger, whether he can’t stand my inability to stay still because he knows I am just chasing my own tail.

I will never know what he is really thinking. I ask and he says “Nothing.” in the most amazing way. And if that’s true, then I don’t resent him, I envy him.