sign language

i said i wasn't really sure what to say
and for the first time 
in years i really meant it.
i think we always know.
i usually do, but just choose not.
sharpened false 
sense of control
in how i am perceived.
be the good, the kind, 
less reactive guy.
the benevolent.  
but this heartbreak
took me out at the knees
the way you collapse into feeling,
as a teenager would.
the world ending.
this time, just one
world shutting
its doors.
my spent fingers 
having kept them slightly ajar,
stuck between door and jamb,
tending to the crack of light
they let in. 
couldn't use my hands for 
a long time. 
became foreign objects.
returned to me now, 

sunburned,
i open and close them and
wonder at their absence,
relearning their dialect.