My Voice

I barely have words
anymore, mostly
just sounds, fragments,
of sentences but
never complete--
verb or noun somehow
absent.

What's happened?

This is the most I've
been able to say in
days and already I
feel freer:

language has liberated
me, from when I was
a kindergarten kid
creating simple stories
to college life, when
theorists, facing Darkness,
told me to sling a new
future at the Rooted
even when slinging mud
was easier,

language has consoled me,
taught me not to hate myself
when society uttered
its damnation onto me,
providing an outlet for
all my fears in this dangerous
world.

Yet I have come to
a precipice of despair--
linguistic failure,
intellectual upheaval,
blocked and
stuck writing
gobbledygook.

I desire to see
what I have written
smolder.

Again.
What has happened?
I cannot escape
this question.
I must know
why I can only
seem to write
about my failures.

Sudden onset dumbness?
No.
I write now, I still have
it in me.

Fear? But of what?
I used to cower in corners,
but I've long since
between in all
weather conditions.

Or maybe it just
the uncertainty,
of not knowing my trajectory,
of not knowing what afflicts me
and this maddened
sense builds from it,
frenzy blocking anything
worthwhile, clouding
my vision.

Whatever the case,
let me be clear:

I
want
my
voice
back.

I want it back,
boisterous,
booming,
bending
flexibly to
my environment.

I must be free.
Need to be free.
I want...want to...
live.