Unsaid on the page

The phone went dead, a click like a tiny bone breaking.

"Are you okay?" she'd asked, her voice a soft net.

And I just stared at the blank page, a white field waiting

for the truth I couldn't speak, not yet.

My cheap pen, it scratches, a sound like gravel turning.

The ink skips sometimes, a stutter in the line.

If I wrote, 'I'm not okay, I'm burning,

and you're part of why I'm barely mine,'

what would that even look like, spilled out

in hurried, cramped script? It's a different animal,

this silent shout. It can't be taken back,

this word, this scrawl, this ugly fact.

It just sits there, a dark stain, permanent.

Like a mistake you never quite meant

to let surface, but here it is.

A festering thing, a quiet, furious fizz.