Monday, October 25, 2010

14420

At the end of the day its words you are left with.
Words that keep you whole- vowels knit your bones to your skin, semi colons & exclamation points weave nerves with veins so blood doesn't pool at your feet so that your heart isn't floating next to your liver, soaking up digested skin milk and Kahlua.

On a Monday night in late October you find yourself with not a word to speak, not a person to turn to, just the swoosh of deep breathing, a steadying calm that has reached out for a synonym, but your mouth feels dry. The words you cherished are stuck.

It's so hard to find peace when the muscles in your throat stretch your skin and all you can think is "who will love me now with this turkey neck.”

You think you are asking for help, but your consonants come out as giggles, your tears are from laughing not crying- sitting in front of a cup of black coffee, stealing French toast off the plate across from you- it’s the happiest of moments where you find yourself welling up.

You wonder why this thickness has clogged your esophagus. The uncertainty you feel turns out to be apostrophes that built up in your lymph notes, the doctor prescribes The Elements of Style by E.B. White. It will teach you that everything has its place. A period belongs at the end of a sentence; a sentence is a complete thought- but what about conjunctions and run on sentences and phrases- where do semicolons come into play?

I once knew a boy, now a young man, who tried desperately to correctly use the semi-colon. Days were spent considering the placement of commas and parentheses, looking for the perfect adjective to describe yellow. But he never said “this is yellow”.

A winter with no snow is upon us. Dead leaves greet me each morning, crunching at the weight of my feet. I walk in silence from home to work, and in reserve. The phone rings and the movement of my lips produce nothing but gasps.