Mar 20 • Share your Poems
Held Behind My Teeth
I don’t scream,
I swallow it.
Every sharp word,
every shaking thought,
every please just listen to me
gets shoved down
like it never mattered.
My throat is a graveyard.
You wouldn’t know that though,
I’ve gotten good
at smiling with a mouth
full of ghosts.
There’s something violent
about being this quiet.
Something wrong
about how I can feel my chest
pounding, begging,
say it, say it, say it
and still
nothing comes out.
Just silence.
Just teeth
sinking into my own tongue
to keep it all inside.
I taste iron
more than I taste relief.
And the anger,
God, the anger,
it doesn’t leave.
It festers.
It curls up in my ribs,
sharp and restless,
scratching,
like it wants out
like it deserves out
like I deserve to be heard,
but I don’t let it.
I never do.
So it builds.
And builds.
And builds,
until I feel like I might split open
just to prove
there was something inside me
worth saying.
4
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Held Behind My Teeth
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