It starts out small,
Quiet and pathetic.
The kind of sobbing that gives bystanders the feeling of
Awkward pity.
She whimpers and every once in a moment,
She chokes on top of her hiccups.
She sounds like such a child.

It grows.
The ******* sound grows.
The crying is a little more panicked, more chokes force through.
It sounds a bit more like she is heaving on misery.
She can’t make her lungs work
The way they need her to.
She cannot breathe without her lungs
Catching on regret
And frustration.

If you look at her,
She is curled up inside her own body,
Wrapping her arms around her core.

Oh God, it’s growing louder.
Can’t You fix it?

She is screaming now.
She shrieks in some sort of pain that we don’t know,
And neither does she.
But she feels it.

The noise of hysteria rips out of her.
She can’t control this anymore.
She is pushing and gripping at the hair on her head
Trying to simulate some degree of comfort,
But there is a excruciating pain swelling against her ribs inside of her.

She screams so loudly.
Her fears reverb
Back
And
Forth
Against the walls of my mind.

She can’t breathe without
A crescendo of panic
Crashing into her lungs
Like a flood of salty, bitter water.

I look at her and I wonder,
Who is she,
And how does she know my pain?