I Wait For Death Like A Soldier's Wife

Bloviate verb, to talk at length, especially in an inflated or empty way. See: me

I don’t shut up. Never have. Probably should. Someone should make me.

My brain is a teleprompter constantly scrolling. Thought after thought all day and all night. If I don’t get it out, it will fester and bubble inside of me until I have no choice but to talk and talk and talk.

I’ve tried keeping it in. I’ve tried writing it out. But I can’t keep my thoughts to myself unless I want to spend long nights and even longer days with a bottomless pit of frustration in my stomach.

The pit is rough, with deep valleys and sharp peaks that wreck the lining of my stomach and my mind. Scraping away at my psyche until I get it all out. Every last word. Letter by letter, syllable by syllable, until there is nothing left.

I talk to fill the empty space so people don’t have the chance to think too hard about me. To think about who I am and what I’m doing. To consider that maybe the person behind the curtain of all these words is, at best, a scared little girl who just wants to be loved and, at worst, a bug that needs to be sprayed with raid.

I want to say the right things just the right way, but no matter what I say or how I say it, my uvula gets sore and dry and sticks to my mouth, and I choke. I hack, and I hack, coughing all over, just trying to return to baseline, and then the silence sets in.

They’ve seen behind the curtain. They know. It’s quiet.

I panic. Coughing. Choking. Hacking. I run away.

From the depths of my stomach comes the flesh surrounding the rough pit. The little bit of food I’ve managed to shove into my mouth that day makes an encore. Ripping apart my esophagus and burning my throat. Stomach acid and chunks of previously eaten food come out through my nose.

It’s disgusting. I’m disgusting. The toilet that my head is currently is the most disgusting. The little brown bug in the corner must think I’m pathetic.

I’ve created a habit of bloviating and vomiting. My guts literally and figuratively spilling from my lips. My stomach cannot keep food down, nor can it keep a secret. In a past life, I would have made a good Catholic confessing my sins to rid myself of the guilt of being human.