I don’t need to hear you shout.
Your words reach me just fine.
But when your voice climbs too high.

Something inside me breaks, and the urge to cry crawls its way up my throat.
I want to crawl into a ball,
hide beneath the weight of it all,
cover my eyes,  
trap the tears that scream to spill my eyes.

It’s like my body knows the storm’s coming, even before the first raised word.

And sometimes I raise my voice back.
An accident, a sudden crack in the quiet.
Then regret hits sharp and cold, because it scares me more than any loud word  ever could.

I’m scared.
Not just of the noice, but if what it does to me, how it shatters the fragile calm I try so hard to keep.