The words swell out of me like a tidal wave. Flowing, fiercely aggressively, booming in percussive unison.

They batter my face with foam and fury, punishing me because of their delayed release. I had been holding them back, keeping them at bay, building dams and diversions so they could not land.

I was foolish. Naive. Ignorant. 

Neglectful. 

I avoided their flood and now they tower above me, looming beyond what my eyes can bear. They flow unfettered, unburdened, unbound. They berate me, bleating obvious obscenities lost in a sea of scorn. One after another. Cascading down chaotically. Showering me with shameful exposure. 

These words need never pause. Not like I knew I did. It’s why I longed to create a preemptive reprieve. I chided them away with an empty curtness that did nothing more than offend. I forgot the hold they have on me. I forgot I am at their whim. 

They are the power holder. 

The ones in charge. 

The will I must obey. 

Or else. 

Wave after wave of wound-tight words wash everything destructively away. My walls crumble, my fences shatter, my lack of depth without them laid bare. Future, present, even the parts of my past I failed to hide, fanned all about. 

Relentless words, wiping one superficial face I cower behind down, then the next. I watch as I’m washed into accepting what was inevitable. I watch as the words win. 

This word, that meaning, this saying, that ending. You cannot breathe for the current keeps crashing without forgiveness. Why bother with that falsehood? Why put on a pretense when you call the shots? Why cower down when you are the terror-inducing truth. 

Chaos and calamity, water and ire. Words of fury and fortitude that never tire. 

I stifled them. 

Deep inside of me, for forgettable reasons and disgracefully dull needs. I shoved them down and went about in this grey vapid world. I put down my head, to abandon this heart, the thudding life of thought that pumps meaning into all I do. 

I would say I have learned my lesson, one egregiously earned, but the truth is the world doesn’t care to make paths for my words. This world stands, too often, unshaken when truth is brought forward. This pompously arrogant world believes it to be untouchable. 

But what the world needs to realize is that it all comes out in the wash.