Thursday, March 12, 2015

Slippery

Words have been slipping
through my fingers lately,
remaining unformed, a jumble of unrelated syllables,
hazy and indistinct,
just out of reach.

Misbehaving
and running away from me
while I try to pin them down
and bend them to my will
but they are stronger than I,
all those vowels and consonants
unmoved.

They don’t care that I need them to do something for me.
They only see themselves.
I am not reflected in them anymore; I cast no shadow.

You see, they don’t need me,
not like I need them.

They can go on, oblivious,
line, stroke, inflection, punctuation
because they are themselves, no matter what
while I am only
the sum of the parts

that don’t add up.

No comments: