affair with words

Found this in my phone. Nicole said I should write more- I do write, except they are mostly snippets while on the go. I store them in some secret cupboard and forget about them. Until I unearth them again - in this case, five months later since November last year. Am quite pleased with the find, rather like finding dusty coins under the bed. Or greeting familiar friends in the form of thoughts that once flitted through my brain. Here goes.

- 

I have a secret obsession with words. I write them with calligraphy pens, type them with a vintage typewriter shipped from 1941 Canada, read them in solitary whispers on my bed. 

I roll them around my tongue, under my breath, in imaginary mental conversations. I like them too much to spill them out on the ground, in front of people who waste them. 

Words are potent, like drugs. The more you abuse them, the less effective they become. 
Some people are addicted to the sound of their own voice. As though they were stones cast to fill a void, ringing and resounding in the cavernous emptiness. But those are just echos- the shadows of words that have no real substance.

Sometimes words become disconnected from your voice. When that happens they become powerless, or merely peripheral- like noise. The disconnect happens not between the tongue and the throat, but deeper- between your mind and your conscience. They cut your teeth before cutting your heart.
 
Sometimes the disconnect happens when the felt has not found its way into your consciousness. In those cases it is not your fault. We are all searching, blundering, through the darkness, for a rope that will draw us out. Sometimes we take shortcuts - clinging on to another's rope - instead of finding our own. That is known as a cliche. It may be degrees away from what we truly feel, but it is within easy reach. It gets us out onto safe terrain quickly, but we don't realize we left a part of ourselves behind. That part which is your own, your voice, your unction, your beating, bleeding humanity.

Words are precious, so they are spare. I taste them, so well that sometimes the moment passes, and they are left unsaid. 

They become heavy, in those moments when the shadow falls on their demise. They stayed with me, and died in me.

Stillborn. 

he walked in

he walked in

when the early afternoon light was warming my room. 

in my drowsy state of sleep I thought my brother had come home. 

my throat was sore, nose congested- all I knew was I felt unusually sleepy after breakfast and prayer. 

He walked in and stood on the right side of my bed and bent over, lightly touching his forehead to mine. 

His hand was on my arm, as though checking my temperature 

I did not have the fever. His palm was warm against the crook of my arm. 

Sleep pulled up over me again like a blanket. 

I woke up in the dream, aware that someone had just come into my room, and I had proof (a tweezer in my hand?)

I woke again, in the exact same position on the bed, with my room as it was in the dream. 

The sore throat was gone.