you will be safe, here.

Careful, I (want to) say. Don’t you understand? No, of course not. There are eggs behind my eyes, and that’s why I’m afraid to think, to obliterate them with the thousands of simultaneously-running trains in my head. No, I can’t sleep; if my eyelash fences are erected then there will be dark and cold and the eggs will die. Forgive me for crying, it’s just that they’re pecking their way out now, and eggshells and eggteeth and eggteeth and eggshells are all I can think—oh, here they are.

You can’t see yet, no, they aren’t ready. Stop talking, those breezes from your lips—stop, they’re turning into cold winds! You’ll knock them out of my head if you keep that up, and then they’ll die! I won’t be able to touch them again!

I can’t tell you this, but they aren’t for you. I’m disguising my dreams in feathers so they can get away before you can crush them; they have such small, hollow bones after all. You’ve seen the fragments of shell come out of my tear ducts, you know something’s changed. You’re always trying to gust it out of me, but you don’t really want it. It’s just that I’ve never kept something from you, you’ve always had all of my thoughts, all of me; it’s not that you’re anticipating something beautiful from my mind.

You don’t know what it used to be like; I didn’t always think in steel and coal. These engines and miles of track lacerating the scenery in every direction used to be the shuddering of butterflies and the paws of foxes and the dashing of stars. You did this to me.

And now I’ve finally incubated something pure and fluttering again. The birds behind my eyes just need to be fully developed before they make their way out, so they can immediately take to skies beyond your grasp.

I’m not sure which sight will be more majestic, the avian visions soaring from my lips or the empty shock parting yours.