wicked little word gods

She clings to words like some sort of life line – like they are magic (which of course they are) and well-meaning (which they sometimes are). But she is in free-fall and needs them to be good. She reaches up, her hands grubby with the mess in her brain, where she has been playing (mother always said, don’t put your hands in your brain – they’ll get gooey for sure and they might get stuck there). She didn’t listen.


She needs a word, one that will keep her from pitching into the blackness. Schlong? the word gods offer. Then, riptide? vestibule? rucksack? catapult?. She wonders if she has misplaced her trust. She believes words will save her. She’s been less than faithful to them, but she believes vehemently (good word, vehemently, though slightly flaccid and over-wrought) that they are her life blood. Chandelier? Flatulence?

Cleave? She rests for a moment, at peace. The blackness of her mind recedes temporarily. Cleave. To split apart. To adhere. To join. To penetrate. How perfectly natural it is, ultimately, to fall apart in order to become whole. She imagines a tree cleaved by lightening, set asunder (during thunder, ha!) from this limb to that one, but whole elsewhere, seamless, in fact.

There is a dotted line tear here in her brain. Cleave, The brain says. Rip the ticket. Drop the stub. Let the sickness drop to the floor. She doesn't listen.  She never listens. The dots line up, interlocking with the intricate simplicity of a straight line, becoming whole.