Don't Delete The Kisses

Here is the graveyard for
All the texts I never sent,
All the things I never said.

For there is no body to bury,
No title for a eulogy,
No name to mourn.
No future it could have been,
It was nothing and yet everything.

Here is the gravestone for
All the love I never shared,
All the loss for which I never prepared.

My body hurts, my mind is tired,
My heart fatigued;
Such work and effort towards
The not-thinking, the over-thinking, the reassuring, the barely breathing.

Here is the kindling for
All the fires that never quite caught their flame,
All the burnt bridges with no one to blame.

No text I write holds as much power,
As that which I feel, and that which I desire.
And so it goes, those texts undone:
A dance between writing and erasing,
Letting go and embracing.

And if those three words are so hard to say
They are even harder to write.
I miss you
Is too much and not enough.
I miss you
Says everything yet nothing at all.

Instead those three moving dots
Let you know I’m on the line,
With nothing but silence,
To fill our time.

———

The written text, as opposed to the spoken word, holds a more dramatic aspect of a temporal shift: The moment of writing, re-writing, reading, re-reading, re-adjusting, waiting, almost sending — never sending, deleting…

Don’t Delete the Kisses is a two-part visual narrative of all the texts never sent, all the things never said. Part one is a redaction of texts I never sent but nevertheless kept a hold of — not quite ready for their premature death. The process of redacting creates a formal sequence of bars, eradicating any chance of discerning the message. Instead, we are left with a hint – the length of each sentence – where a repeating redaction bar might suggest three words written but deleted over and over again. Part two is a poem about the choreography of writing and deleting, of attempting to speak but sitting in silence, of hoping to see those three dots moving.

This piece urges you to speak openly and honestly to those dear to you — friend, lover, intimate stranger. And remember: Don’t Delete the Kisses.

The title of this piece takes inspiration from the song Don’t Delete the Kisses by Wolf Alice.