Twenty one.
I dont swallow my words anymore, but I still chew them. I chew them hard like gristle, like regret, as if grinding them down might somehow make them easier to digest - not for me, not for them.I pretend my teeth are filters. Maybe, if I shred my truth finely enough, it won’t sound so sharp when I finally spit it out. I keep my thoughts in my mouth for too long. Let them marinate in silence. Let them soften in spit. Not really saliva anymore - no, what comes out of me feels like something else entirely. Something heavier. Like a slow-moving poison that coats every word I try to say, sweetens it just enough to pass inspection, but still leaves a sting in my throat. I chew and chew until all that’s left is a sloppy exhausted mix of softened syllables and half hearted truths, and even then, it’s not enough. It’s never enough. No matter how careful I am, no matter how much I strip the edges of my voice, the moment I open my mouth they start spitting their venom right into it. Diluting it with their assumptions, their discomfort, their need for my voice to sound a certain way, mean something that doesn't threaten their quiet. I poison myself trying to be digestible, and they still tell me I'm too bitter. I rip my thoughts into tiny chewable pieces and they still act like I've thrown knives at them. I’ve been feeding people my vice like it’s an offering - soft, broken, pre-chewed like a desperate kind of mercy - and they don’t even notice the blood in it. They don’t hear the ache dripping from every sweetened word. They just go on talking, go on explaining, go on correcting the very thing I killed myself to say. And I’m left wondering why I bothered making it easy for them in the first place.

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A little bit about the author :

Name : Moona

Pronouns : she/they

Age : 22

Location : France

My hobbies are writing, acting and modeling. Some of my special interests are dinosaurs, musicals and true crime.  

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