In the company of writers,
every word is treasured.
Each phrase or paraphrased anecdote
Is turned over and twisted and rearranged
By Experience and Intuition and Irrationality
To extract meaning from perspective
And to boil truth from trial.
Coffee-cup questions and curiosities are courted out for company
Present or otherwise or in mime;
Dance to the jingle of diner spoons and sehnsucht.
Tears efface the wrinkles in your hand,
The soft, sunken spot plotted upon your cheek,
And the crinkled chin.
My hand is unfamiliar. Unwarranted. Grasping.
I am turning a knob to a door without a frame
And I am lost in the dark space of your gaze.
Yearning. Expanding to encompass my destination. Grasping.
We listen for the moments that we missed and we jot it all down in the notebooks that we’ll miss when we are so old our bladders take 20 minutes to take a goddamn piss and the youth and the beauty was so close you could taste it with raspberry lips incandescence.
I want the memoir ink of every word to wind its way back into the mouth of babes from whence they came so I could see the world all young, afresh again.