If thunder could only speak through a trumpet,
                  that is the sound.

It is everywhere,
                        abruptly,
                                          then slowly not- a passing flood.
    A confidence of noise that terrifies the insides,
sends them scattering in all directions,
      but bound to you.
              the fruitless effort makes them-

                                               resentful.

Desperately,
                  I wish I could capture that sound;
                              pin it to this page
                              and share it with you,
                  if only to prove to myself its existence.

When it rises again,
                                    I am still broken.
  A school bus made of rubber
                out of control
                        too fast to stop
                forcing itself through too small a gap;
            the agony of that sound.

All life inside me fades as it does
          replaced by uneasy stillness.

               I can see no reason for it but-

                                           something is wrong.

The scurrying of my insides
incites the space I find myself in to salivation.

           It could be-
                  the way it feels,
                          the stillness;
                I am already within the monster’s mouth.

There are no signs for or against this
                            just the absurd quiet between;
                  a caesura in the fear.

The hills outside could be rolling off
                              into a horizon unseen,
or the listless valleys of an ancient tongue overgrown;
                        the eater of worlds.

I feel it deeper now, its third report.
                    Like I should know its purpose
      and it is violently disappointed.

The birth of a maladie underdeveloped.
    Only trachea and lungs and noise,
no head or mouth to shape the air;
    fumbling out this inelegant discord.

                                           That’s the sound.

                                  I imagine the world is silent,
    lest whatever ill fate it portents take it too.