Healing Machine for Dane
For the regret of not saying things you should have when you had the opportunity
It's not any one thing, just the cloudy feeling that you didn't give that compliment when you could have, didn't stand up for yourself, didn't apologize when you knew you were in the wrong, didn't tell that person how much they'd hurt you. The words would bubble up in the moment - sometimes just in your stomach, sometimes your chest, sometimes all the way into your throat before they got stuck there for good. You can tell by the tension in your body that they're still stuck there: entire lumps of words, compacted over time into the spaces between the soft tissue.
Luckily, your health insurance covers the procedure to extract them, and the Ear, Nose, and Throat surgeon at the Cleveland Clinic is confident that they can all be removed. They put you under. You have the old dream where your bedroom gets larger and larger and you feel so small in it. You run into your parents' room and sleep on the floor at the foot of their bed, seeing silhouettes of soldiers shooting each other. This time, you stand up tall and the moonlight stretches you to an impossible height. You open your mouth to speak and a sea of words pours out, its enormous shadow devouring the soldiers on the bedroom wall.