i tried to speak.
  but what rose
    was heat.

not language.
  but a spilling.
    a bleed.

something fractured
  the alphabet of self
    from within—
      letters collapsing
        before they reached
          my tongue.

i said “i—”
  and it broke
    mid-air—
      a sentence
        without ground
          or grammar.

no trauma.
  just the quiet
    prefix of unraveling—
      un-.

unmade.
unshaped.
unspoken.

they (or maybe
  the floor,
    or some other gravity)
  didn’t steal my voice—
it simply
                slipped
          out of me
        like skin
          i no longer lived in.

i’m not lost.
  i’m just
      unwritten.

—