for weeks I was unable to move anything from the precise position it was in at the moment I woke to find you gone, living like a Jain monk who walks knowing it's impossible to take step or breath without sinning by killing insects with each step I'm displacing something, even if only the air but this morning without thinking I casually moved a dirty cup left behind with your lipstick stain on it someone watching me through the window would think nothing of seeing me just pick up a cup and put it in the sink but pain registered in me like a lower vertebrae creature that has no organs with which to make sounds and if injured must suffer in silence; or like a squid--its location of pain sensitivity is similar to that of a human, but if its skin is cut or its delicate perineum is touched, instead of crying out it will discharge the contents of its ink sac while writing this I realize that I never questioned the assumption that the expression of pain is directly connected to the discharging of ink next