Silence

For someone who spoke fluent English,

I didn’t know how to say a lot of things.

Words that, in the mouths of others,

flowed like tropical water,

tumbled out of my own,

like fragmented boulders with a vendetta to humiliate me.

Phrases that should have tasted of honey,

somehow tasted like bitter tar.

I didn’t know how to form the words,

informing the woman that I honestly didn’t mean to push her,

she was just a victim of a domino effect.

I couldn’t figure out how to explain to my teachers that,

it wasn’t because I was lazy,

it was that I physically could not find the motivation to do any work.

I couldn’t ever figure out how to explain

that my depression and my anxiety

work together and against each other,

as if between a rock and a hard place,

the anxiety was the panic as the rock was pushed into place crushing me,

the panic that felt like roaches running up my spine screaming at me to run,

and my depression was the death that I had already accepted in my heart.

How could I even begin to explain to anyone,

that where you saw lines,

I saw my wrist.

Perhaps because silence speaks volumes,

but few have the frequency to hear it.