One day, I woke up and I said to words,
"Words, you have not been the comfort
I was hoping for."
And they taunted me.
Yes. They stuck their thumbs
up under their armpits and
ran around, bobbing their heads,
like baby chicks dyed in
unnatural colors for Easter.
I said to them, "Wait! I wanted to flop
on top of just one cursive 'm', or
sit for one minute leaning against
the line of a 'b'. It is only my intent
to forget our differences.
Can we not be comfortable,
the one with the other?"
And they laughed,
collapsed into rolly polly-looking
creatures, all grey lines,
blurring the distinction between
cylinder and sphere, and
rolled in a thousand directions.
It was time to turn into PACMAN. Time to lasso
the rounded words with a thought that lashed out
with fury. Time to jump down on the moving
obstacles till I got a thousand points.
But rather, I sat there
in the swirls of dust they left behind,
in the knowledge that truly
there would be no
gentle Mozart country dance.
"Words," I said, "You are beasts."