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.