Sick of Words

I am word weary. I am tired of tedious characters marching stiffly like tiny soldiers in regiments of paragraphs across a page.

I am wary of shady words with their cruel thorns, sleek seductions, hidden agendas, and high fashion wardrobes. I am annoyed by shifty words with their little beady periods punctuating deceit. I am bored with dreary, weak words, always minding their p’s and q’s. I am fed up with grandiose words mincing truth into carefully parsed packets of freeze-dried candor.

Because I do not know words – tender, true, and worthy enough to tread upon the pristine sweep of your soul,

I give up on words

and offer you the integrity of silence,

the undefiled page,

and the wordless wonder of your own beloved self.

Linger here in this moment on an autumn day.

Oh, for once, do not rush down the labyrinthine corridors of dense vocabularies to the echoing mortuaries, where truth lies shriveled in drawers pulled in and out by experts.

Be stilled.

Soon truth will rise up and burst from the cramped
tomb of your preconceptions.

Then you will hear it sing its little freedom song  —

a soft whirr, a buzzing hum

like a cat purring to herself in the sun.