Honey Fire

I used to feel very small 

when people looked at me. Even though I was big. 

Their eyes and words raked me and I felt like a crumpled autumn leaf - one of the brown ones. 

In my dreams, they chased me, and I was small

and slow. 

I was a pebble they kicked on the way home, popscicle juice dripping down their fists, humming a tune they heard from a commercial somewhere. 

I was a walnut, trapped inside, and their knocking on my shell gave me headaches. 

Then one day they came from everywhere they were everywhere

andIwascompletelysurrounded! 

Words were a cacophany that blinded me and scraped me raw and I was only nothing at all, a tiny clam with the shell wrenched open. 

And they told me to speak! 

With my shell hanging bent the way it was I saw another clam and they told them to speak too, and there was popscicle juice on her shell. 

There was still a cacophony but crystal clear, I heard a cry - 

the other clam. 

And somehow, 

she was even smaller than me. 

How-was-that-even-possible?

And the noises proked and prodded and the more they chattered the louder they got and there grew like a vining wildfire a ringing in my ears 

that couldn't be tamped down - 

and I exploded. 

And suddenly my shell was on the inside and propped me up instead of holding me in, and did you know there were flowers out there, out here? 

The sky was wider than I could ever imagine and the voices were really so small. 

They were all so small

And I was solid and wide and completely immovable and my tongue was like whiplash and god it felt good - 

like honey fire. 

And did you know most people are afraid of that?