Listening to Dust by Brandon Shire

Author:Brandon Shire [Shire, Brandon]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Gay, Fiction
ISBN: 1470181290
Google: y9qhtgAACAAJ
Amazon: B007JB6ATS
Publisher: TPG Books
Published: 2012-03-09T11:00:00+00:00

Chapter 11

Dustin,

I dreamt of you again last night; dreamt of your lean, hard body pressed against me in bed; dreamt about how you woke me Christmas morning by nuzzling on the back of my neck; how you murmured to me, telling me how much you loved me without actually saying those words.

I thought I was still dreaming while you were talking to me. I thought all the things you said without saying was just my own longing; my own hunger hammering at my subconscious, pulling me back into the barbarity of the real world. But once I heard your voice, once I listened to the whisper of the thoughts you held so close, I knew I was awake and I just laid there so that I could consider what you would not say plainly or in waking hours.

Your words filled my sleep and pulled me from it, Dustin. I felt them reach in and touch that space that had ached in my chest for so long. And yet, as I awoke that morning I so clearly recalled the conversation we had about how you thought all words were just fiction, and how action was the only true reality. But isn’t putting voice to words an action in itself? Isn’t speaking the most treasured parts of your heart aloud the industry of movement; of change and courage; of engagement, and ultimately, the industry of victory?

Looking back I consider that you may have been right about words and action, but only in part. And I say in part because I still know your caress on my skin. I can still feel your stubble on the back of my neck. I can still taste the salt of your body. Those are your actions that spoke to me, Dustin.

But you are also wrong because it is your words that cling to me most. It is your words that hold my heart in place; that keep my hope fresh; that last and gather together when silence threatens to plunge me back into the black misery I knew when you left.

I realize that it is quite likely that you assume that it’s just because I’m a writer and a romantic at heart that my thinking runs along these lines. And that may be so. But I sense that it’s so much more than that.

And maybe I hold onto this because I know how familiar you are with that feeling too; that vacant ache of deep loneliness; that throbbing in our chest that we think no one knows but us.

I never told you this, Dustin, but that morning was the first time, the very first time since my parents died, that any words filled the vacant space that was inside of me. Of all the vast numbers of words that I have put on paper, or the vaster number that I have consumed in my existence, none has ever touched that spot as your words did that morning. None.

I don’t know where that vacancy came from. Maybe

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