Language Barriers

How can I tell you what I feel when the distance between you and me is the sum of a hundred silent miscommunications?

I hold out my hand.

You bow.

I bow.

You shake my hand with serious formality.

How can I even begin to articulate the way my heart beats when you so much as look at me when our vocabulary of love is so different?

My love is a fierce force of nature, sometimes silent and gentle like the motion of the ocean on calm summer nights.

Often it is unrelenting and wild, the insistent sound of hooves upon arid ground.

I have known the heights of unrestrained passion, and I have known the lows of love lost.

I have shouted my love from rooftops and I have wailed in agony like a madwoman.

But you are serious and quiet and I do not know how to read you.

How can we be so similar and yet so critically different?

You are politeness and prudence incarnate.

I am loud and rash and often too much even for myself.

You imbibe only what you must and often not all.

I can drink most people under the table.

You take care of yourself well.

I am messy and sometimes out of control and you are so different from what I know.

So, I am at a loss for words. I do not know how to reach you, or if I even should, so this truth will remain safely locked behind closed doors.

This language barrier keeps both of us safe.