WallScreamTrenchGasBreathe

The cavernous sea rose up from the depths and claimed me. Silent screaming was my usual way, but today...I had nothing. I was so full, mouth full of bristles, throat full of regret, gut twisted and heavy with shame. The thorn in my side took on new dimensions, my wrist screamed from the act of writing, my hand could not hold itself up to love, to hold itself let alone another. I screamed and screamed from the empty barren cavity of my chest, and then that fell away and I realized I didn't have that either. Just silence growing creeping gnawing sewing the wound shut but it's crooked full of gravel and slivers shades of gangrene why didn't anybody clean this out before sealing it locking it so deep below? I wanna hold I wanna be held I wanna steer this story maybe it's time to drop this story. Today I realized my family story is one of rejection, the one I tell myself, that my mother didn't and doesn't want me, that I can't have love, that no one will ever be there for me. This is a pattern, a deep-rooted imprint, that repeats itself again and again in all my relationships. I expect others won't want me, that I'm an intrusion, an annoyance, I give up before I try, I don't talk to people because underneath I assume they won't be my friends, that they won't want to be, or that they'll leave me and I can't trust them with my heart. What's that, my heart? You mean this bone in my chest where the pains begin, this tight stranglehold where I struggle to draw a full breath? I see no heart, no organ, not even any blood. Just a wall, a tall wall, a thick wall, a cold deep stone wall, fathoms wide, oceans deep, galaxies high, wars thick, imperceptible anything but the wall, it goes on forever, everything is the wall. But wait, what's this, maybe those sharp pains are a pulse. The tightness is because something is straining inside. Something is growing inside, something is expanding, something is pushing against the wall. Something is that isn't the wall. Something is making room for itself, something is claiming space. Something is getting bigger; the wall trembles and tremors and cracks appear. Gas slips out through the cracks and it's the foulest stench, rotted guilt and pain and shame and doubt, mothballs and dying old sick people like your grandfather's closet if your grandfather's closet was made of fear, and I think mine is. Fear ten thousand years old, fermenting in a tomb, its bitterness disguised as it went sour and stale, but it still don't smell good, the kind of chemical sweet like a broken refrigerator and you just know it's wrong, not sure exactly what's going on but it definitely shouldn't smell like that. Nothing should smell like that. I feel sick with the gases, spiritually nauseous, light-headed heavy and depressed. Every fight-or-flight impulse animal instinct screams at the ready just smoke a joint smoke three joints maybe you wanna have a drink haven't been drunk in years but remember how you used to love it? Crave it, like ecstasy, mass distraction and synthetic happiness, numb feels more alive when I lie to myself, but you see I can't smile when I'm not wasted, it cuts deep but this way it don't hurt me. They say you get drunk to release what you can't show sober, and well I'm a happy drunk and I hug people and tell them that I love them. I open my body and I open my heart and I think you're beautiful and I appreciate you and a small squashed voice inside of me knows I would have more credibility if I could tell you how much I value our friendship when I'm sober. So years go by, bottles are emptied, my liver drowns in the tears from my heart. But that's the way shit goes down, it's a north-south axis, I didn't invent the law of gravity, or that other one where particles of matter attract and stick together. What I'm saying is I'm not responsible for this gluey hell-ton mess, or at least I didn't create every particle and I don't know much about physics, but I know it's a part of me and the glue is making it hard to breathe. The knots hold me back, and the barbs pierce when I try to move, but goddamn it there's cracks now and that shit's coming out. It leaks here and there and I can't believe how bad it smells, acrid and potent turning my stomach burning my eyes my gut falls away and why did I just remember now that my main recurring dream as a child was something coming after me and I was never clear on exactly what it was, a big dark cloud but my response was terror, every time I tried to scream but no sound would come out, my throat felt like glue like my chest does now, or there was just no power no voice, and I tried to run too but my legs weighed 3000 pounds with the consistency of Jell-O, struck to the earth and funny how my knees don't work now. Funny how I have difficulty speaking my truth now, or speaking at all. Well I tell you what, I can go on living in that dream and by that I mean dying, or I can keep screaming and I'm bigger now and I've found ways to get some air. My chest expands a little more with each breath. The glue is cracking, the wall is cracking, and god these trench gases are terrible, there's been a war in this chamber gone on for generations, but if there's anything I learned it's that I gotta let that shit go before it can go.