VOICES

It was the voices in her head. Sometimes they felt like two people- sometimes more. They would toss and turn and jerk their head sideways, as they talked to each other. They started talking first- then the voices got a bit louder and they started sounding really mad at each other. The madder they got, the faster they jerked their heads at one another. And then it seemed there were more than two people in there. She would walk from room to room, trying to quiet them. She would try not to run into her mother or other people in the house, lest they should hear these people yelling at one another inside her head. She was ashamed of them. But her mother would say something in the middle of it when she passed her in the kitchen and then she was compelled to respond, sounding like someone else. But even as she speaks those words, she knows it isn’t her. It’s the voices talking through her mouth. Then she would walk fast on the streets- quickly, quickly- to get rid of the voices, but they keep nodding at one another in disapproval, narrowing their brows till they darken like the winter morning. They never stopped.

It took her the courage to walk as fast as she could, without thinking of people who stared at her as she raced down the road that connected to the main street, disappearing into the crowd. The street lined with people was filled with faces. Some of them jerking their heads like the people inside her. It took her long breaths, quick steps and throbbing temples to quiet the voices down. When they gradually stopped talking, they left behind a tight chest. It did something to her nose-the feeling. Something that traveled up her chest through the throat, to the nose and then the eyes. And it embarrassed her to be walking the streets like that. A battle only half won, to shut the voices up. Next battle- to confront people on the streets.
Some of them know there had been voices in there a while ago.
It was all about the voices inside her head.