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 the dollops gurgled to each other in my belly, splashing themselves into riot.
Waves of stories salt my tongue, only to be swallowed down. The storm rages in the back of my throat.
I talk like drowning– fast and disorderly. The words 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 bends my mouth into boat, lets itself be measured, and filled like a weight.
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, undamming myself wide open with a pen.
It is time, I tell the raging waters, It is time to pour you back.
rarasaur 