Anger

I wake to the sound of gnawing.
Not outside, not rats in the walls—
inside.
A chewing behind my sternum,
muffled at first, then deliberate,
as if something with teeth has been waiting for me to stir.

Anger is patient like that.
It doesn’t rush.
It waits for the moment I’m weakest,
when the air in the room is still soft from sleep,
and then it crawls out from its nest of red nerves,
stretching in the dark like a houseguest
who has lived here too long.

By breakfast, it has settled in my jaw.
I grind toast into paste,
bite down too hard on words I don’t say.
Anger is a ventriloquist,
it makes me speak in a voice not my own,
sharp and guttural,
a voice that bruises every throat it touches.

I’ve tried to starve it.
God, I’ve tried.
But anger doesn’t need food;
it feeds on silence,
it feeds on restraint,
it feeds on the way I swallow apologies that taste like ash.

By noon, it has moved to my hands.
Every gesture becomes a weapon—
a slammed drawer,
a coffee cup placed too hard on the counter,
knuckles whitening just to hold a pen.
My lover stares,
and I want to scream: It’s not me, it’s the thing inside me.
But it is me.
That’s the worst part.

By evening, it’s everywhere.
A red tide,
an occupying force,
a parasite wearing my skin like a coat.
I look in the mirror and swear my reflection sneers back,
cheekbones sharper, eyes glassy with heat,
the face of someone who wants to shatter glass
just to hear it break.

And the ugliest truth?
Sometimes I let it.
Sometimes I open the door,
set another place at the table,
and let anger eat first.
Because anger feels honest.
Because anger, for all its wreckage,
is the only thing that has never abandoned me.

When the house is quiet,
when everyone has gone to bed or left altogether,
I sit alone in the dark and hear it breathing.
Not outside, not rats in the walls—
inside.
It presses its hot mouth against my heart
and whispers:

I am all you have left.

Stay Weird. Love You. Mean It.