Poem: Longing for Language #the100dayproject Day 46

Longing for Language

I’ve been starving for so long and didn’t realize I could count my ribs one by one. I am hungry for the sounds that our tongues make when we struggle to find a word. The gibberish of our careless mouths. The tip of the tongue, how the loss for words tastes, the absence of a mouth, the fullness lacking in the teeth and the cheek. I want my mouth full with language.                   I want to smell the fragrance of our breath when we say words aloud; words bloom from our lips as flowers do. Our breath is the divine vehicle. This air latching onto my words like an infant at the breast. It carries my words like a boat. I want to gather words into my ear, collect them like sand grains in a shell, hold them there to hear their ocean sounds, the S’s and O’s of water, receding and repeating. I want to gather words into a basket and bite into them like fall’s pinkest apples, feel their crisp flesh against the roof of my mouth, gnash it against my teeth; their flesh like a wafer held on my tongue to sanctify my words.                  I want to turn words into something we can touch with our hands, our bodies, our tongues. I want to make language physical, as if it had a body that I could hold close, spoon against my backside, make love to. I never want to feel alone with language. I want to feel its breath on the back of my neck, feel it like the ghosts that haunt me. Words strengthen in the night, with wine and food, a full table, language moves like a woman through a party who lifts her skirt, invites the world in to find the secrets of her earth. I want to make words into a universe of possibility. I want to eat our mouths as we speak, gobble up each word as if I could record all that’s been said in the fibers of my body. I consume words, I become the air we speak, the ink and paper, already my body fattens, padded and content, I’ve become what I eat.