i just want to speak (the pounding in my chest is out of time)

Each day, the government has begun to allot only two hundred words to each citizen; Emma is unsure the reason, perhaps people had decidedly stopped listening to each other or somehow totally forgot how, but she finds that she doesn’t mind too much. Before the mandate, people spoke approximately seven-thousand words a day. They used them with a triviality: when they stubbed their toe, when they needed someone to hold the door for the elevator. Now, all are more observant of others, of the way silent communication often says far more. Like others, Emma has grown adjusted, found that this new version of life may be better, somehow, than what they had before, though she doesn’t if she’s really an accurate judge. She never enjoyed talking too much, not to anyone that wasn’t Alyssa, anyway. With Alyssa, she has a thousand things she would like to say, stories beyond anything she could ever say even with an unlimited quota.(Or, the government has started counting everyone's words, but Emma doesn't mind. All she wants is to talk to Alyssa.)