What's for breakfast?

We don't speak the same language.

She talks endlessly about Gloria Anzaldua and Lilia Downs. I try to front like Weezy changed my perspective on rap, and worry that I'm being different to be different.

I've worried aloud at how hers is a mangled language, an uncertain language filled with insecurities and held hostage by silence, but it's hers, nonetheless.

And I don't know what language I want to speak. What role I want to play. Do I really want to watch her cook dinner? Or should I break our little gendered binary and throw down on the only thing I really know how -- grits with eggs, bacon and toast?

Too many calories. No balance. Water doesn't make up for it all.

She talks academic and I daydream. She daydreams and I ask what's wrong.

Maybe I'm afraid of the silence? The silence that I grab by the neck and project my insecurities from: you're too boring, too Black, too guy-ish, too short, too skinny. Eventually my well-timed jokes won't be funny anymore. Every new friend she meets won't be an exciting excavation into my past. It'll just be.

Sure, we've been infatuated with one another for months. But once the ordinary kicks in, what happens? She cooks dinner, I cook breakfast. Go to sleep cuddled in each other's arms, wake up facing opposite ends of the bed. Time our showers perfectly. Make toast while she does her make up. Live my life for eight hours, plus two to commute. Then come back to and do it all again.