Once, I read a fairy tale about a man who could swallow the sea. His brothers were gifted with equally unbelievable talents, but I was fixated on him- the man who drank down a world of water so they could walk across.
Lately, I feel like I swallowed a tsunami. Like every sentence I haven't been able to express became a gentle teaspoon of sea. Like they gurgled to each other in my belly, rocking themselves into riot.
Waves of stories splash out my mouth, only to be swallowed down. The storm rages in the back of my throat.
I talk like drowning.
The words coming out fast and disorderly, slapping each other, fighting. They come out like spittle, not fall.
I don't remember them long enough to write. I make notes on my page, but they dry up invisible.
Once, I read a fairy tale about a man who could swallow the sea. How he drank it down and walked across.
How he turned a body of water into a skeleton, and then, how he turned his body of human upside down, and poured it back.
At night, what I want to write turns my tongue into a boat, lets itself be filled and measured.
This is just a teaspoon. A small capsule of storm.
It almost sunk me, to try to hold it in.
It almost drowned me, to try to hold it back.
The drip will dry soon.
I will not be able to read it.
I am the skeleton and the body,
the man and the sea,
bursting with the need to empty,
calling for the mist of full.
I hang upside down from my bedframe. My head aches,
but it always aches.
I gurgle to the riot inside me, holding my mouth wide open with a pen.
It is time, I tell the raging waters, It is time to pour you back.
