Swallow

I held the words in my mouth. They gathered like marbles, accumulating with every syllable I didn’t speak. I marveled at how others didn’t notice them. I wondered how they’d push my cheeks out if they had mass and volume. I wish I could run to a tree like a squirrel and scream them into the hollowed out hole of oak wood. Though I’m afraid even the tree couldn’t handle the sheer volume I had to spew into it.

Would it make the tree feel as sick as they made me?

I could feel each letter sliding down the back of my throat like drainage. They’d rise up and I’d swallow them back down.

Truths. Facts. Opinions. “I love you’s” mixed with “how could you’s?” “That really hurt me because…” tied in knots with, “I wish I would have, I still could…”

I hoped that they would dissolve. A’s and I’s and E’s melting back into the saliva that borne them. S’s and B’s and C’s curving around my molars, getting stuck in my teeth. Maybe sugar isn’t the reason I had cavities. Maybe it was words I never spoke, lodged in those tight spaces, sharp as they dug into my gums, as I grit my teeth and ground my jaw. I urged them to go back to whence they came but they came back for me. Verbal heartburn, roaring up my throat, threatening to break free from the enamel bars of gritted teeth. Vowing to come up and out like vomit if I didn’t give them free reign.

Tastes like salt - All the moments I wasn’t allowed to defend myself without being called defensive.

Tastes like something sweet gone sour - That I love you but I’m not allowed to? Or I can…but I can’t say it? So I swallow the three writhing syllables and feel them burn like tears all the way down to my soul.

Tastes bitter - A warning for my friend that her relationship won’t last.

Tastes curdled - A warning for a coworker that their boss is taking advantage of them and throwing them under the bus behind their back.

Tastes like molded potential - All the ways I could contribute but couldn’t because though I saw it as being myself, they saw it as being smart, which would lead to others telling me I was intimidating.

Tastes like loss - Silly hobbies and off topic stories and childhood memories I can’t tell because you don’t want them or need them - and when it comes right down to it - do you need me?

Wounds scabbed over scraped open, the salt dug into them poured on and rubbed in by my own hand by the sharp corners of all those unspoken words crystallized.

They call it ‘staying in your own lane.’ But if you’re always in the same lane, you can never get off the highway. You can’t help anyone else in any other lane. You can’t explore new roads. You just drive until you get to California or Virginia and then just…into the ocean you go.

Will the salt water wash the words away as the waves crash over the car? Am I myself or am I what you want me to be? Do you get all of me or do you get the fractured pieces of the shards I give you glimpses of? And more importantly, do you care? Do you give me all of you in return and if not, how do you stomach being half known by a person so remarkably capable of knowing you so completely and loving you both because of, and in spite of, yourself?

Do you care to see all of me? To hear the words I’d never normally let go, so that, for once, I can be myself and breathe out a sigh of tremendous relief made up of the souls of all those dearly departed syllables.

How many words have I swallowed? How many sentences have I twirled together like spaghetti wound around a fork of submission and shoved into my already full stomach? I used to think they’d all make me explode, but the older I got, the more they just slipped into a space of silent surrender. All those words and sentences and feelings huddled together in the damp darkness of my stomach, curling together until they crumbled apart.

At night, to fall asleep, I hold my right hand in my left.

I tell myself I’m not alone when I am, in fact, the only person who knows every single word I’ve never let out of my mind’s cage. And is that not being alone?

When I close my eyes I see a cosmic collage of beauty and pain exploding on a stage of unfathomable scale. An unexplored landscape filled with more wonder and potential than most can dream. My ability to connect and create boundless positive change exists at an intergalactic scale and it waits for the only person who would never make me push away my thoughts or swallow my words or strangle my feelings. It waits for you. And if you don’t wish to hear these words, I will swallow them too.