“All of my writing, you know, is silent,” I tell my mother between sweet orange mouthfuls of peach-bite, and she’s not looking at me because she’s too busy watching the sunrise, thanking the divine in its entirety that the sun is kinder to us here. It’s already warm out but not too warm, because that would ruin the scenery, that would be too reminiscent of my prior life—when I lived in the dark, embracing its fire, submitting to the heat. All of my writing is silent, I tell my mother, like I’m giving a confession. All of my writing is silent because I’ve beaten it all to death.

She’s not listening, because I can see her expression grating against the light and I know she’s still thinking about Arizona—me in the dark and in the fire—and I can’t really blame her. That was rough for us, but me? I’m trying to let it go. I’m trying to make my writing speak but I just can’t find words in the absence of them. I want to tell her it’s all so monotonous that it might as well be nonexistent—I’m not writing anymore, I’m throwing up, vomiting myself into the keyboard, my organs now shriveled up and shiny, like those gas station food gummies we bought and stuffed in our bellies back when things were still pure. I’m not writing anymore, I’m putting myself all on display, skin and gut for shock value, to move, to make them feel what I refuse to feel. I’m not writing anymore, I’m praying under the wicked assumption that my desires can never be answered, saved, or countered. I’m not writing, I’m praying that they find something in me worth validating. I’m not writing, I’m regurgitating.

“And what do you mean by that?” my mother doesn’t say. I want to tell her that I don’t know how to explain it but that would be admitting to some crime of existing vividly, with conflict. I don’t know how to explain it, it’s too complicated, yet harrowing in its simplicity: I write so much about feeling restrained that I have forgotten how to speak. I put the tape over my own mouth and filmed my own ransom video and now all of my writing is hollow because words, like people, don’t get back up when you shoot them down. I’m out of ammunition but the noise is ruining the sunrise for us and I’m trying to be more present so let’s just move on. I’m tired.

Instead of responding my mother takes the peach from my hands and wipes the juice from my lips. “It doesn’t have to be,” she says. “Do you want it to be?”