Finding My Forever Words
Dripping down my brain stem like honey, landing on my tongue as I hear them echo in my head, transmitting themselves through my veins and out of my fingers as the keys go click, clack. Theirs is the high I crave.
I hear them in my head, bursting with joy to be put on paper, given a substantial life. To be kept forever.
I am nervous to say the best ones in my head, to craft the perfect phrase or sentence when I know I cannot keep it forever. I repeat it over and over in hopes of burning it into the depths of my brain, wishing I had a piece of paper to scratch my symphony of a sentence into.
This morning I strung a few words together to be perfectly juxtaposed between these two thoughts. Once the train came and I burned my tongue on my coffee, they were gone with my taste buds. I mourned that thought immediately after I lost it, a good friend gone too soon. Our love affair was fleeting and subsequently so was my grief. Again, as I pen this, I fondly recall and yearn for those words. Yet, I can never replicate them, their exact sequence unique to that moment. They explained my mind with an ephemeral perfection.
I ravenously read the words others felt worthy enough to make concrete. I let them roll through my brain like water, enunciating them silently in my mouth. Tasting their sweet edges on my tongue.
I want to climb into the author’s mind, knowing all the words she let bounce around the walls of her psyche. I want to find the words she deemed unworthy to become the forever words. I imagine them more important than the words written for posterity. They’re more honest, more sincere. I want to steal the words only ever intended for her eyes to see. The ones she wrote to work through her ideas, to find her own voice. Maybe she can help me find mine too.
A beautifully written, polished piece tastes good in my mouth.
It’s the sour words, the jagged ones that feel like broken glass and might cut my lip, that make me stop and think. The words taste like lemon juice and hot sauce. My brain feels like my face would look tasting them, futilely twisted beyond the point of recognition in the hopes of quelling the discomfort. I need to taste the words that make me reread sentences three times. When a thought is so complex it cannot be translated sweet and smooth it is more interesting. Not easy, but worthwhile.
I can feel the thoughts like this in my head. Nebulous, floating behind my frontal cortex, sitting directly between my left and right hemispheres. I poke through my own brain, trying to get a grasp on the thought and squeeze it out onto the page.
Sometimes I succeed, making forever words that are sweet and smooth. Sometimes I write down forever words that are sour and jagged. Sometimes the thought slips right through my prying hands like silly putty and I must settle for the feeling of the thought. I must let it sit in my brain a bit longer, aging indefinitely like a fine wine. I must settle for not knowing if I will ever squeeze that thought onto the page. It may never be translated into forever words.
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Image by Sebastien Wiertz
