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i heard it first when i was four. the sentence—death sentence—what set me
to shaping silence in my space to prove you wrong, when you asked:

"don't you know how dumb you sound?"

even now i carry the muscle memory. my teeth touched, my lips bit,
my mouth shut. inside me i kept myself, sitting shivah while the gibberish got clogged up
where teachers and toothpicks dared not tread. because of course i hadn't known,
and of course i would learn nothing, come monday morning
with me all full of weekend words, the problem
just kept getting worse. you all laughed then—as you would laugh now
—and the cycle began again.

for that was the echo i was doomed to repeat, you see, i had a mouth on me
like an oil spill, a voice that bent me backwards on the good days
and broke me open on the bad. it was my fault, of course, that my words were wired all weird,
so illegible i had to cut the edges off my teeth for anyone to listen. the syllables
just flew right through me, ate me empty, and left me

too light to be tied down
and too heavy to be cut loose.

these are the things that i would never learn to swallow; the things i speak
not because they're the truth, but because i just don't know how to shut up.

and even this won't make you hear me as i hear me. the things i speak,
how the hell could i ever speak them so you'd understand?
i can't. the words fail me
like they always have.

so yes—becca, eddie, poppy, aym,
dr. louis, ms. costello, man who never asked my name—
yes, i know how dumb i sound. but if the meaning's all the same,
the lacking lies with the listener. so i will set
to spitting silence in your faces to prove you wrong: my teeth rot,
my lips split, my mouth opens…
the words come out,
and they fail me, they do, but they speak

with all that power speaking has, to tie me down and cut me loose
and tell me that it doesn't matter how i sound,
so long as i'm still making one.