The Words
When it is quiet, that is when the words come. They don’t float in. They just start to flicker in like hanging lights being turned on one by one. They each have their own shape, color, and texture. They hum and hover. I sometimes wonder if they have wings so gossamer that I can’t see. I smile up at them. They are a gift. A secret weapon I can pluck from. To create and fight wars with. To paint pictures and rearrange them. These little birds that keep me company unfurling everything faster than I can type. Sometimes it is a thread that I pull and follow. A trail of breadcrumbs that I pluck individually. Some just out of site so I have to talk to other words to find the right one. Often times that whole of it comes cascading down all at once with a thumb so loud it reverberates in my brain and tingles my skin creating frisson that makes my legs jump with the energy of anticipation.
They don’t sit still as they flitter down whispering into my ear the sweet nothings of worlds, stories, and people I could create. Too many of them titillating me with different stories all at once so my brain becomes a ticker tape parade of trying to listen and write through the hum of imaginary papers flying through my head. Papers that could be books, stories, essays, etc. that scream of what could be. “If only others knew of this story” each word screams excitedly.
If only…
Sound creeps in. Cracking the interior of this word world that lives in my brain. Each noise, tick, car, email, responsibility creates a fracture in the unlimited ceiling of words. Each little crack is painful to me, not them. The words continue to live. They are not indentured to me. They live for all to use and flit about with. They will keep pitching their stories to another and then another until someone swoops their hand up and picks them from the roar of ideas thrust through this secret world of words.
The fractures continue to grow. Texts. Emails. Laundry. Dirty floors. Mess. Work. Job. Appointments. Responsibilities. Each crack grows longer, wider, and deeper in darkness with each noise from the outside world. Even now. I can feel the words slipping away. Running from the cracks so they don’t get swallowed up. I don’t blame them. I don’t blame me. I blame this outside world. Full of people without gifts, people who forgot theirs, people who never received their gift, people whose gifts never got to grow… their unquenchable grief will never stop until it has extinguished those who held onto their gifts for dear life. Unwilling or unable to let go. Clutching them into the darkness and evil that the giftless continue to propagate.
It’s cold out here in the ungifted world. It’s dark. Grey. Each of those factures cause the gifted physical pain. Real pain. Depression. Some of us succumb to the death of our souls still trying to clutch the gifts we have left. Sometimes because it is all we have left in then noise of this external world that becomes loud, harsher, sharper, and more painful every day.
I think that the gifted will save us. They hold the power to rekindle the light that burns in the internal world. They have the power to pull it out from within and share it. They have the power to warm the darkness of the dead souls of the ungifted. They have the power to ignite new gifts. To go into the darkest of places to find gifts lost, forgotten, shriveled, dead, and alight them anew. They hold the power to turn the internal world into the an external one while banishing the darkness.
For me.
The words only come when it is quiet. I was forced to build a loud busy life.
Already the words are gone.
A garbage truck.
An e-mail.
A text.
A chore list.
I can feel it. When the words leave. When I return to the dark world. Physically. I can feel it.
It hurts. It tightens my chest. It claws at my stomach. It clenches my muscles. It narrows my eye site. It’s visceral.
The words have left.
I am alone again.