Should have Would have Could have

and every word you try to say is breathless, lost to a sideways glance or down a flight of stairs, tumbling, like you would, too, if someone decided to pull the entire ground from under you. they shatter like cherry-flavored ice crystals in slushees, building in the dead center of your right ear, like an orgasm you can't touch. you're forced to mouth the slow syllables while you're convinced no one can see your lips forming vowels, your tongue soundlessly colliding with the roof of your mouth when you come across an "L." what you need is an audience, stretching out in front of you, overly attentive and impossibly supportive, so you can yell what you feel, and they'll wait on every word, every syllable, eying them like a bouquet thrown out at a wedding. but no one gets that lucky. so you're alone with your ears pounding, your lips folding, palms stretching, but mute as the words corresponding to a sunrise or a nuclear winter. you're not really alone. but for all your calculable quietness, decibel meters circling your throat, you might as well be. I want you is overdone. I need you isn't true. I would like to... is too meak and unappealing. But the thought of what you could say and what you should say and what you will say, all of these things, none of which are the truth, keep you dizzy and unweighted, to contrast the heaviness of your chest cavity, filling now with possibilities.