What the Jaw Knows

The jaw goes first. One hard clench,

uninvited, like a door swung shut.

Then the vision lifts a half an inch

and every fluorescent light cuts.

I was standing in the cereal aisle.

Nowhere. The most nowhere place.

A room designed without a style,

institutional, beige, and stripped of face.

Something climbed up from the sternum—

slow and electric, not quite pain.

The kind of pressure you can't confirm

until it's already in the brain.

I left the basket in the aisle,

handle warm from my own hand,

and walked out through the exit doors.

The cold hit. I could stand

in it—the exhaust, the gull

that screamed once from a cart-return post.

I breathed until I felt the pull

loosen. Just a little. Almost.