defamation

Brenna Lakeson

The words sat in my voice box,

for years,

my lips couldn’t make the words.

When I tried to say them,

my voice turned to vapor

and poured out of my mouth like smoke,

evaporating.

Hearing my mouth spit out the syllables

made it true,

and the longer it stayed trapped under my tongue

the longer I could try to erase it.

Memories are sometimes a relief

but the one with your taste in my mouth

is a drilling into my eardrum.

With a small hope

of releasing the pressure

I stick my hands down my throat

and force the words up and out.

They are messy but they are true.

I don’t know quite how to arrange them.

Me,

                                 too.

Still, you find me.

You are ravenous

and tear at the flesh of my words

like a wolf on the hunt.

You tell me that my words

are a house of straw,

and that you plan to set it on fire

if I don’t do it first.

My story will go up in smoke,

you warn.

Instead,

I fortify them

in the fire

into steel.

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