it’s like the sound of my own words caught in something sticky, a kind of resistance in the back of my throat, trying to push through, and even though they came out all uneven and raw, the air around them felt like it solidified, finally, into something that could actually hold the edge I was trying to create, a new kind of firmness forming in the space those wobbly sentences just carved out. and what if that's all it needs to be, this messy, imperfect articulation of what i need, because the feeling isn't one of failure but of a deep, almost ancient satisfaction, a settling into the very core of my bones that wasn't there before.