It’s been three days since I ended up here, in your house. Three days of a silence that screams inside my head. We sleep in the same room, a fragile trust built on necessity and the unspoken understanding that being alone now means death. We haven't found a common language, not in the way the world used to understand it. Instead, we exist in a space of guesses and gestures. We watch the mind-numbing glow of the television together, and I comment in the only language I have left, the one you hear as nonsense. "Gsrh rh iziv yfoohsrg.." I'll say, shaking my head at the idiots on the talk show. I’ve started to pick up fragments, the most important words, and I drop them into the chaotic stream of my own speech like lifelines. "Tfvhh... FOOD?" You guess, you nod, you sometimes just agree with a small smile. It’s enough.

We listen to music in your room, the vibrations a welcome replacement for conversation. We smoke, the shared smoke feeling like a shared sentence. We play solitaire, and you jokingly teach me words, drawing on scraps of paper. You drew a sun the other day, and I almost flinched. Now, it feels like we've stopped trying so hard to force understanding. It just happens, intuitively, in the space between a glance and a gesture. And right now, we're lying on this couch again, the blue light of another idiotic talk show flickering over us. I glance at you, then back at the screen, and I mutter, my voice low, "Blfiv sviv, zmw blf fmwvihgzmw nv.." It’s not just a comment on the TV. It’s a confession. You are safety.