These words flutter helplessly against my lips, clamouring to be let out, to be allowed freedom to escape and soar into the wide, wild, world. To sweetly caress and to kiss. To make statements and to solve arguments. To discuss and to delve deeper into issues.

But they remain trapped inside of me. They jangle loudly against the cage where they’ve been locked up inside of me. They are safer there. Inside of me.

Fear is the lock on the cage. Fear is the one that strangles them and chokes them. Fear is the one that plucks their wings and kills them violently. Before they can fly.

They say the tongue is mightier than the sword, swifter to cut, and sharper to bleed. So inside, their dull edges never cut through hearts, never pierce through hopes, or poke through dreams. They never make it to the tongue.

Before, they would trickle down my fingers and escape onto the page. They’d find a way out into the world through the pen, through the curves of ‘I’s and ‘L’s and ‘U’s. On the page, they’d make statements louder than the lips ever could. They’d speak truths bolder than the mouth could ever utter. They’d paint a perfect picture of longing and loss and love, of heartbreak and hate and home.

But now they are blood clots in my fingers, helplessly lodged there and unable to move. So they rattle against all the other thoughts that turn into words that make it out, all of the ‘okay’s and the ‘yes’s and the ‘no’s, hoping to latch onto something so they too can fly into the wild.

A few of them manage to squeeze themselves out. They are dizzy and have been locked up for so long. So they stutter and stumble from my fingers onto this cold, white page, lost, a little bit broken, and not so beautiful, to become these words.