the green eye

The sky glows gold in a strip over the tops of the houses, weighed down by the bruise-blue clouds above. The cat is in my chair, asleep with his eyes open.
Yesterday morning, my best friend texted me a verse of poetry. From the middle of the snow-dusted woods, I sent him back a verse of my own.
[I'm adept with syntax, but can't seem to say the necessary thing.]
The silence on my end of the phone line looks like an ocean, deep and troubling and still unknown. I keep too many secrets. They hold me mute when I ought to speak up.
And now I'm laying on the floor, legs against the wall and feet reaching for the ceiling while the single green eye of the smoke alarm stares down at me in judgment.
I'm trying to be a better person (a better friend). Last spring I let things fall and some of them cracked in the drop. I'm trying to pick them up, trying to repair what I've broken.
I want my friends to know how much I love them
 but in the dark I'm afraid (too afraid) that it's something they don't want to hear.

And so I keep fighting.