Breathless

I can only hope that what they'll come to eventually see
Is me becoming more of me,
And less of a shell,
quiet and empty,
An echo chamber of my own little hell.

Please understand,
I wish everyone well,
But the moments I want to scream come so unexpected,
It's an executed ambush that steals my lungs first so I cannot tell.

So as I'm begging for breath,
For just a little more space,
Watching the darkness sparkle the air in front of my face,
I begin to remember I wasn't always this way.

Not always the causation of furrowed brows,
And the subject of back door conversation,
They tell me that they worry,
And I suppose I would too
if I heard the hush that fell in post-devastation.

See, one day it left and never truly came back--
And not one song,
no sermon,
nor academic study ever seemed to summon it again after that.

Filling the silence never worked--
Not the dark whispered tones,
The empty laughter,
The blaring radio every late night drive home,
I tried to drown out every alarm bell in pure white noise,
and yet one fact remains...
I lost my voice.