I am not very good at relaxing,
I have never had a quiet mind.
When I talk
I trip over the words ahead of me,
tongue too slow for brain,
mouth numbing as I stick on a sound
and turn that over and over again
until I force myself to stop
and reset the track.
It is not a stutter.
It’s a meltdown of language
and if I hesitated to breathe
I’d master the sentences,
know what I was saying
before the noise was spoken.
How can I relax
when I do not know what I will say next,
or when I will need to bridle my mouth
and bite off the bullets
rattling behind my teeth
all to keen to gauge holes in someone else.
I am not built to relax.
I have not got the patience for it.
