sunday mornings

"I felt this awful obligation to be charming
or at least have something to say,
and the pressure of having to be charming (or merely verbal)
incapacitates me."
-Peter Cameron

(I found this quote on Erika's blog ChambanaChik. She's a lovely writer)

I feel this way. A lot, especially lately, and I don't know why. There's a part of me locked away inside myself, and the key isn't hidden in a patch of rosethorns, but it's here, right under my tongue. It's being trapped inside yourself. It's the comfort and constraints of a bone prison. It is the discomfort of suddenly forgetting the shape of you, of becoming too small for yourself.

And the girl you are locking away sleeps in a pit in your stomach and curls painfully against the soft pink of you. And you are thinking about everything in the world she deserves, everything in the world you deserve, and the thoughts make you want to crawl backwards into the earth, but you can't. And you want to cry, but you don't.

The days fold themselves into a ball and lodge themselves in your throat.
You don't sing. If you were sure God could hear you, you would, but you're not.
You swallow your songs.
You're too afraid of choking.