“I’d like to tell you something I’ve never told anyone,” says a trembling young woman. “It’s been locked up inside me for so long like a hinge in my gut that won’t swivel. It’s a moveable joint linking thoughts, but it’s clamped shut and I want to connect whatever has been frozen in my belly by giving my thoughts away to you.”

“If you keep putting these feelings into words to me alone, they will turn into lies,” replies an old, fine-boned woman with dark eyes like pitted asphalt whose lips part and crinkle.

With barely a breath coming from her thin mouth she continues,  “Words told to me alone will turn you into stone and you may disappear and never come back.”

“You are wrong. Please pay attention to what I want to tell you.”

“You’re in danger if you hastily press me to hear what’s locked up inside you.”

 “You’re off kilter,” the young woman says. “You must fill your ears with the music locked inside me bellowing like an underground wave.”

“My heart is wrapped in my throat when you keep pounding and pounding at me.”

“But you are wrong. My words are not turning into lies.”

“Because you have not told me what you’ve never told anyone before. That’s the rub. All this chatter is preventing the inevitable. Your voice is weakening, your limbs becoming less visible. That hinge is loosening in your belly which will lead to your undoing.”

“I don’t understand. I no longer know if I have nothing or something inside me to give to  you.”

“That’s bothering you?”

“It wasn’t before, but now I don’t know, it’s begun to.”

“Do you wonder why it bothers you now, all of a sudden?”

“I’m not sure I want to know.”

“That hinge links thoughts and feelings inside of you as you suspect. It’s there for a reason. You didn’t know this when you first made your request, but now its significance is brewing. If you give away your thoughts, you won’t get them back.”

The young woman felt she was on the verge of disappearing. A fierce beating of her heart shook her thinning bones.

***

“I feel as if I’ve come a long way though it’s only been a few minutes of speaking about what’s hinged inside of me. Is the end of me nearing?”

“To the contrary, your bones are getting denser, the figure of your body is becoming visible again. You never had to tell me anything at all. You’ve just reached the beginning. You’ve needed to speak only to yourself all along.”