The Scream (2026)

I screamed.

I screamed so hard the moon shook.

I screamed a scream that shriveled like

aluminum foil into the expanse.

Siri asked me if I wanted to record it.

I opened Safari, and an ad

recommended a muzzle.

My therapist suggested I give

it a number from one to ten.

I screamed so hard my eyes went red.

My family avoided me.

I wrote the scream into a speech

for an event, and the news caught wind.

They called it vulgar.

One collective I joined called

it a metaphor and suggested I sell it.

I did, and not a soul bought it.

I brought it into Sam’s Club.

They signed me up for a credit card.

They sold me a large TV.

I brought the scream on a date.

The next day I was ghosted.

I screamed so hard

it brought me to you.

You held it in your hands

and wrung it like a washcloth.

It stayed loud.

You looked me in the eyes

as though waiting for it

to become something else.

I opened my mouth

to scream to you.

There was nothing there.

I needed there to be something.

Of all the things I had screamed—

the state of the country,

the things we do to one another,

the price of being alive,

the unbearable fact of other people—

You stayed untranslated.

Instead, there remains a fermata.

The conductor eyes me. The piece is finished.

The audience shuffles in their plush seats.

Instrument cases clack open.

I keep bowing the scream.

This is my body's homeostasis:

It's elaborate work,

remaining approximately alive.

My physicist friend says sound

cannot cross a vacuum:

there must be matter there.

Something capable of trembling.

I scream so hard

the moon shakes.

Between us,

nothing carries the sound.