Just Words

They’re just words. God, if only they were just words. If I could speak and not feel like I’m losing a part of me every time a syllable falls out of my mouth. They’re not just words. They’re never just words. Attached to every combination of letters is this deep, entrenched meaning and when you write them on the page they say something specific. So fucking specific.

They’re just words, and you throw them around because you don’t know what they mean, but I pour over my letters and cross them out and rearrange them until they get as close as I can make them to what I want them to say. They’re a part of me, so if I’m going to let them out to breathe or put them on a page, they’d better say something worth saying; they’d better be ready to stand out there fully formed, not just whispers and fragments like the pieces of dandelion in the breeze when you wished for heartbreak to end last spring.

Days when they come out quickly are hard and days when they come out slowly are harder, and sometimes the days I don’t try to make them come out are the hardest of all, like somehow I’m neglecting the best part of me. Maybe it’s not the best part of me. Maybe it’s the worst part of me. Maybe everything that makes me enchanted with the sounds of the keys clicking or disgusted with the image of the cursor blinking is less the picture of the brilliance than the spiral of madness. Maybe I’ve created a personal hell that burns itself more space with each thought I dissect and each conversation I replay.

But words, at times, are all I have – the only thing that keeps me rooted in whatever twisted form of reality I find myself in that day. So let them be just words: they’re mine.