Dead Languages

You and I have not spoken the same language for a long time now. We have lived together for almost two years, and I’m starting to think that we will never understand each other again. There is something familiar and foreign about the way your lips twist to form the echoes of words that I used to know, that I am supposed to know. I can sometimes remember, not clearly but in the way you remember an old dream, in distant and distorted clips, the way “I love you” sounded in the long dead language we shared. We function, not well, but the way an old car starts, slow and shuddering, function in a way that suggests it might not tomorrow. I wonder if now, if any remnants of ruined words still hold the same resonance. I wonder if now, if I told you I was leaving, if you would flinch the way I did when your voice growled in ways that I have never understood. I wonder if I told you I do not love you anymore, if it would still translate in some broken and fragmented way, if you would even hear me close the door.