For All The Girls With Loud Voices

By

He holds the bottom half of my mouth with his own,
his top lip pressing into mine,
one of the few times
I am ever silent.
We crush rubies from passion,
leaving remnants of red on our tongues.
I ask,
“Where are you going?”

He says,
“This was never the plan.”

He says I am a loud girl,
I laugh,
“I know that.”
As a baby,
I cried for 5 months straight,
suffering from colic, a condition marked by periods of significant distress in an otherwise well-fed, healthy baby.
My mother holding onto tiny bits of sanity,
rocking me back and forth
and back
and forth.
I joke,
“How did you not Moses that situation? Send me off my way in some basket.”
She squeezes my shoulder and says,
“Because eventually, you stopped crying.”
I wonder if perhaps my vocal cords
strengthened,
as I found my way through the reeds.

Now we are here,
Lonely youths sipping from red cups
and insecurities.
Everybody talks,
but no one really says anything.
The rum only heightens my volume.
My words echo off the high-rise ceilings,
maroon-colored walls.
I sit on his lap and laugh,
too loudly,
he says I hurt his ears.
I’m sorry,
and I kiss the back of his head,
wonder why I just apologized
for my own voice.

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