I told myself it was time to open my mouth. My words had festered too long, dampened beneath the tongue, suffocating in their own saliva. The hole in my face tore wide, convulsing— a wound that gave birth to letter-clots and stunted phrases. On their way out, they splintered my teeth, tore at the corners of my lips. They gasped for air, hungered for flesh, they needed to be heard. But the world’s ears were closed. So my language flew, feral and bitter, into the nearest skull— slid through the tight seams of a stranger’s naked ear. They crawled inside, gnawed at soft tissue, chewed thought into pulp. And from that brainmush they built their nest. My words, homeless no longer, made their dwelling in someone else's silence. Now they live, however grotesque their genesis, a ravenous litany that refuses to die. Though I am left a ghost within my own silence, and still my language survives, though it came at the cost of our peace.
