James Mclain Poet Free verse

Alexithymia

I wake and feel my body speak before my mind—
a knot in the gut, a pulse in the throat,
something twisting, but with no word to match it.
It’s like being haunted by emotions I cannot name,
ghosts tugging the curtains, unseen, unspoken.

When my mother wept, I watched her mouth move
and felt only a vacancy in my chest,
as if the room where love should echo
was padded, soundproof.

I learned to survive by silence—
to keep the storm behind glass,
to let my face be still while the air burned.
There was never language for the ache
that came when someone said, I love you,
only a pause, a small, embarrassed smile,
as if they’d asked me to translate thunder.

What caused it?—
years of swallowing what could not be said,
a father’s voice that made feelings dangerous,
a mother’s grief that had no door.
It is the body closing shop for the night
while the heart keeps working in the dark,
sorting the unspeakable into bones and breath.

And still, some days,
I can almost hear the words behind the wound—
tiny animals scratching to get out,
the first syllables of the self I never learned to name.

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