Speak

A/N: This is the result of several counselling sessions at school to which I remain as stubborn as ever. It's free verse in the sense that it rhymes in some places while it doesn't in others. ...Review?


Liquefied,
empty,
the silence stones me.
My heart beats, its sound
amplified,
and it shrivels up inside me,
willing the lights to dim
instead of burning through me,
so my fear catapults to the brim.
My vision quakes, my voice surrenders
to the blank metal faces before me.
I gulp down my fear, but it only
pulls at me harder.

“Speak,” the rhythm of the voices says,
“Speak,’" they say, and call, and plead,
“We know there’s a voice in there somewhere.”
But all I want to remotely do is scream.

I've padlocked my lips,
you can’t make me move,
even though my thoughts throb fit to burst.
My mind’s a gymnasium,
but if you cut the noose,
my songs will arch past my cranium
and I’m afraid I’ll lose them
in the galaxies strewn before me;
out of reach, out of harness, out of mind.
So I’d rather they remain out of speech
so they can bind
me together,
and keep me from breaking

So hear me shout:
“You can’t make me,
you won’t make me,
you'll never make me speak.”

The crowd applauds – quick, hasty claps.
My shoulders loosen, my thoughts relax,
And I smirk wildly,
because they haven’t heard me speak yet.
If they heard me speak, they’d be scathed for life,
so I hold my thoughts tight, deep in, deep down.
I retreat to silence and wordlessly drown
in myself.
"You’ll never make me,
you’ll never shake me,
you’ll never hear me
speak."