Midnight ramblings

She longs to speak, but cannot bring herself to do so.

The silent minutes and hours and days roll by and she remains quiet because there is only one thing she can think of, speak of...this secret...but she will not give life or breath to it, not here, not when she is exposed and bare.

She tucks herself into bed at night, wishing sleep would come and she writes imaginary words on her ceiling and eyelids when it doesn't find her. She plucks words from the trees of her mind, turning them over in her hands, testing their weight, holding them close or discarding them, thinking of how sweet it would be to speak them aloud. The energy of it all buzzes inside of her and she rolls over, trying to quiet it and soothe it away. But sleep still dances around her like a hummingbird never quite still enough to land. The clock blinks and the tree boughs grow heavier and heavier with words ripe for harvesting.

She tries to appease herself by speaking of it in vagaries and shadows, never really saying what longs to be said, never succumbing to the birth pangs of the truth coursing through her, but instead she says something that amounts to nothing, hoping that this small offering is enough to make it through the night.


(Caveat: only words, dears, only words. nothing but textual decompression. and wine, maybe some of that, too.)