The seed of a scream sits somewhere behind my sternum.

It writhed, crawled, or (maybe) floated there with great stealth.

It’s the spark that fires the powder keg.

There’s no old-fashioned fuse,
slowly burning like a sparkler.

You never see the rippling shockwaves,
just the debris —
that detritus that begs,
“What happened here?”

Scream stifling
requires walking around with no air to gasp —
no air to scream.