I Feel Myself Torrent Now

The words came out wrong. They always did. But for the first time, they felt true.

By Tuesday, I couldn’t sit still. My leg bounced under my desk. My pen skated across paper without my permission, drawing the face of a boy I’d loved and lost to silence, not death. By Thursday, I was crying in the shower without sadness. Laughing in the grocery store without joy. Everything was leaking. Everything was flowing. i feel myself torrent

The hardest part wasn't the sadness. It was the rage. A hot, stupid, beautiful rage at every person who’d told me to calm down. At every teacher who’d said "too sensitive." At every version of myself who’d smiled and nodded and drowned a little more. The words came out wrong

And now the water was coming.