Words

This post was originally written March 20th, 2021

There are days, maybe you can relate, where I just don’t have access to the words I need, to say the thing I need to say.

Normally my head is filled with them; The words. But days like today I’m lucky to put enough together to express anything meaningful. Anything at all.

I see you staring at me expectantly, toe tapping impatiently, while I dig around the closets and dark recesses of my mind, searching for anything that might help me say what is buried in here- just beneath the conscious mind.

I see them—my words. Like fish swimming under a thick layer of ice.

Wiggling warm bodies, vertebrae of syllables, thick mucous encased slippery vowels, rolling melodically, circling slowly at first and then faster darting in and out of each other’s wake, teasing, taunting, tearing flesh from bone, until nothing is left but air bubbles rising to the surface.

Nothing.

Nothing? What am I without my words? How will you know who I am?

Words.

They unite and they divide. They can be borrowed, quoted, stolen, taken out of context, completely dismantled and rearranged, used like an arrow to attack and defend the status quo.

Launched to destroy in the name of love. Twisted like a pretzel until the original intent has been wrung from the thing and hung out to dry.

Devoid of content.

Emptied of meaning.

Examined beyond recognition.

Obliterated.

Smeared across the screen with a brush of disdain.

Pity the fool who has no understanding of who she is beyond the words carefully placed in a spoon and lifted to chin to sip over dainty china.

I used to be you.