By Audrey Lambert, TIWP Student

“you’re so shy” they say,
“you’re so quiet,”
but, don’t you know
how loud it is in my skull?
you can’t hear it,

thoughts like a spinning top.
sorry i don’t feel like
speaking to you.
nothing personal,
really, it’s just
i don’t think you 
could navigate these 
echoing canyons.
i can barely read the
map myself and
the white water’s
too dangerous for you.
trust me, you’ll prefer the quiet.

sometimes there’s too much 
for me to say for me to say it.
other times, you ask me
a question and my 
rapid river turns lazy,
the skull is a barren desert,
pin-drop silent,
so i scrape up whatever
tumbleweeds are left
at the bottom of the barrel
and choke out some 
stuttered, half-coherent 
something just to satiate you,
and as soon as i’ve said it,
the dam in the drought-dry
canyon cracks and my
skull floods with everything
i should’ve said.

“you’re so quiet,” they say,
and they look at me like
i’m a goddamn ghost town,
head in the clouds and
full of helium.

sorry, i’m better with 
words when i don’t have 
to really say them.
it’s all about timing,
really. I never have
the right thoughts 
at the right time. 
i say too little and 
i think too late.

there must be something
wrong with my brain- 
to-mouth correspondent
‘cause my brain-to-hand
-to-pen-to-paper junction
is so much smarter.

“you’re so quiet,” they say.
i’m not.
i’m not, i’m just
thinking
too fast or 
too slow,
Goldilocks must’ve
stolen the just right.
maybe that’s it:
just right.
just write.
i’m not quiet,
i’m a writer.
i save my words for later.