I.
I (*pause, inhale deeply, sigh it out*) am in love.
These words?
Ignited me.
Burned in me before I’d ever heard them uttered..
These words?
Isolated me.
Marooned me till I, woman, became an island, impossible and glorious.
Their cadence?
Tore through my soul and re-introduced me to myself.
Spoke my humanity.
Sung my desire.
Whispered my heartache.
Shouted my fury.
Caressed my soul.
These words breathed me into being.
From words I was formed and to words I return.
I love their all in all.
Power conveyed to nothing-me
to grasp the intangible,
to describe the invisible,
to fold into myself the inevitable,
and lay at your feet the indescribable.
Oh, but how I hate.
I hate that these immutable words preempt my every thought.
I hate that these interminable words spoke me before I ever uttered them.
I hate that these words were before me and before all time.
I hate how they have been spun and caressed,
wooed and seduced,
breathed out and breathed in a billion times before my first.
Every word.
Every line.
Every intimation of intimacy
Sucked out of them til I.
I am left breathless,
Speechless.
Wordless.
Powerless.
Each expansive, enigmatic, enticing utterance leaves me
envious, embittered, and empty
Words, promised me, cheated on me, failed me
Words, leave me panting, anticlimatic
As all the passion seeps from my soul, my marrow, my lips
Until I am silent and still.
Mellifluous and cacophonous.
Ellipses to the eternal noise
of words, words, words
…
On Afternoons and Coffeespoons 