The radio has to keep playing.
Car horns have to blast, the most
and the loudest you’ve ever heard at once.
Quickly, they have to be replaced
by a surge of metal static; metal on metal,
metal on asphalt, metal on fire, metal on body.
Inanimate materials have to sound
like they’re screaming. Your thoughts, too.
Your thoughts have to seem
like they’re being spoken aloud.
Your mouth can’t move. Your chest
can seize, but your jaw stays locked.
You have to breathe as if your body is
a suction vacuum hungry for sustenance.
Every time your heart beats, you have
to feel it bruise your ribs. Everything
has to be an ocean. Wild.
At night, where there is no beauty.
Everything must be at war.
Maybe there is no winner,
but there is always a cost.
The radio has to keep playing.
It keeps playing. It keeps playing.
Only then will you catch it by a thread
before it darts away. A shiver within you,
throbbing like something newborn.
So subtle. So disbelieving.
Silence.