I am silenced by grief, by shadows and blindness and the infernal heat wave that coats my city like an itchy, heavy blanket.  In my mind I am a writer, but in reality, I feel myself coming unhinged.  I try to climb up through my lethargy and snap my pieces back into place, but the heat pushes me down on the floor, where blindness doesn’t matter and the stillness is intoxicating.  If I am perfectly still, the heat won’t touch me and my ghosts can’t find me.  If I rise to the occasion of my creative pulse, I may burn up in the face of my fear and the darkness that chases me through the minutes of my life, whispering that I am useless and defective.  But, the sacrifice is my voice, and it is a sacrifice I am not yet willing to make.