Words I Swallow Poem by Mariam OfBabylon

They ask me why I never speak,
why my words come slow, like fractured light
spilling through the cracks of a locked door.
But how do you shape a scream into something soft?
How do you make a wound sound beautiful?

I keep my voice in my pocket, folded small,
tucked between the lint and the loose change
of all the times I almost said something,
but swallowed it down like a stone.
It sits heavy in my ribs,
a language only I can hear.

I press my pain into paper, into walls,
into the spaces between footsteps.
I lace my sorrow into sentences,
send them into the wind
like whispers that never find their way home.

Somewhere, someone must know this feeling,
to speak in tremors, to drown in silence,
to watch the world pass by
without ever leaving a mark.

I wonder if echoes ever grieve
for the voices they once belonged to.