I committed the act: I verbalized. I tore the feeling from the dark safety of my chest and gave it the cold air of the world. I did it because the unspoken is a heavy meal that never digests; it sits in the stomach like a stone, a slow poisoning of the self. I prefer the sharp cut of the word to the dull ache of the secret.

My anxiety, you see, is a creature with long, restless legs. It runs faster than my own heartbeat, outstripping my reason. It pushes the words out of my mouth before they are dressed, tripping over their own feet, making mistakes, clumsy, naked mistakes. But what is a mistake in the face of existence? To err is merely to pulse. What is truly unbearable is the slow suffocation of a throat tightened by everything it refuses to release.

On the days when the tongue fails, my gaze takes up the burden. There is a wild flexibility in the eyes. I speak through them because they allow for a shimmering ambiguity, a truth that can hide even as it reveals. It is a silent phonetics, perhaps more painful than any sound, because it vibrates in the space between us where no one can take back what was seen.

And if, finally, I fall into a total stillness, understand me. If the words cease to come, it is because the moment of their worth has passed. What is left is not a secret, but a conclusion. In that silence, there is no more need for the struggle. Just forget. Let us be silent together, for even the silence is a way of finally arriving.

©️Beatriz Esmer