Of Words Collected

Stirring inside me all the thoughts, all the emotions, all the words that accumulate—they build and collect in the deep places of me and I find there is release in penning them. As slowly and quietly as soft rain falls, misty and sweet, pooling in sparkling puddles, rippling and singing down the drain pipes, glittering on leaves and petals, the words collect inside me. Often they appear as pictures in my mind—often they appear as the features of your face, the purest green, as clear a glass, the finest gold—and I dream of you. The water is peaceful to look on, calming and soothing as we soak our fingers, our bodies. This collected water purifies and nourishes. Yet it is easily forgotten that water suffocates and drowns if we give it no respect. Words run down my lips silently, words pour from my eyes. Words are my only offspring, a pitiful harvest.

Could you love someone who produces so little? Can you see any use in me, any worth? Hopefully my pooling words are not unbecoming…but I know they are. I cannot help but let them collect in my mind, and I only drink so that this exchange of fluid may occur—that my tears, my words, may take the place of that which I imbibe. My fingers wade through a thousand letters searching for the sublime combination that gives meaning to what I am dreaming, what I am thinking and wishing. Surely I have moved beyond feeble notions and into something deeper. No? I must try again then.

I remember the moisture in your hand as you held mine, as you held it with sincerity but lacking passion. It could have been my words, again, pooling in your palm as your held my fingers, rigid sentinels that belied the order of their master, within your grasp. I long for that hand, but I long that it slips into mine and not its invasion by my own, stealing the damp sweetness from the crease of your hand. This same sweetness crouches in your words and tingles down your arm as it holds you, propped between us, this sweetness that will not let me turn away from you, no matter how desperately my heart cries to be free. There is nothing I long for like you unless it is the accruing of words and the release I feel when what is bound up inside me at last finds freedom and purchase on the page before me.