Sometimes when you fall asleep in my arms, I whisper things that I’ve never spoken to you ― or anyone ― out loud before. I speak of how much I love the curvy topography of your ears, and how the distribution of freckles on your back reminds me of drops on a windshield when it first starts to rain. Of how the richness of your voice resonates through my head in the quiet hours of the night, as well as in the loudest moments of the day, warming me from the inside out, and clearing the static from my system with its vibration. I tell you about a pain in my heart that I’ve had as long as I can remember ― a pain that has thick and thin places, a pain of separation that eases when I’m alone in the woods or wrapped around your reciprocating body. I tell you about the visions I have in the middle of the night, when almost every other creature is still and silent, but my mind is racing in circles trying to make sense of the day’s words and images before they fade away. I tell you what it’s like to feel the emotions of everything around me, human and non-human alike, how it overwhelms my internal sensors, fries my nervous system, makes me believe I am someone I’m not. And I whisper that, for years, I’ve looked up at the night sky, hoping to find you, somehow mixed in with the stars.
— heidi kalyani, 2016
from the *nothing is black and white* project: illustration created out of meditation with a single unbroken line