I was supposed to join a spoken word event called Words That Matter, but other things got in the way. I wrote these pieces by asking my friends — “what’s your favorite word?” and having them expound on it a little bit more. They were all pretty much penned on the day of the event itself, but never got to leave the confines of my phone and the almighty internet cloud.
Your favorite word speaks volumes about you. Your favorite word, out of all the other possibilities in the English language — just thinking about how you can isolate a single one and deem it as your own is kind of mind boggling. There are stories. Promises. Memories. All placed behind these words, that people just dare toss around — not knowing how much it can inflict on you, affecting you, taking you. Language is something that I’ve always taken for granted, but have learned to love in a new special way the more I’ve aged. Language is a gift, and to come with words to describe every single thing and every single thing that cannot be described — it’s something that only we can do, really. Figuring out favorite words is like unlocking hearts, and stories. It shifts, it changes, molds, adapts, but nevertheless — in the instant that it is uttered, it is a strength that wavers forevermore.
Here are four of my friends favorite words. Here are some other words that I strung about together for those friends. Here is language, in its purest.
“limerence”
the state of being infatuated or obsessed with another person, typically experienced involuntarily and characterized by a strong desire for reciprocation of one’s feelings but not primarily for a sexual relationship.
you cave your soul into trust, lose
fights with sunlight – its crusade wages
against the fingertips, mélange; you
are an explorer of veins in crust and blue intersections
promise me you will realize that we are a terrible dissonance,
we are mixed blood, fight, desire to dissipate into ash as we came
merely because the moon does not bow down to the waves, does not
mean it is transfixed – remembrance as it sings about the sky.
you live for the rush, the static of tv, the crash of the waves,
the beam hitting the corner, the night in at its break.
i will teach you to live for the silence, isolation in its beauty, the
calm before the storm, the day at its weakest.
you are a fighter, but that does not mean you will never
tremble to shadows and footsteps like a dreamer.
m.vdd.
“black”
of the very darkest color owing to the absence of or complete absorption of light; the opposite of white.
you were a cascade with the horizon from the moment
you were sent of halos and ethereal brine. you were a sanctified
evangelist of palinoia, descent from defiance, convection to
join a congregation of starlight when you were already labyrinths of galaxies.
when I tell you to close your eyes, you expect darkness. The succinctness
of haze, of rest, of eternity. but if you look close enough, you will see
what you are amidst the emptiness of black. Colors, and
sight, result of veins and
sparks in waves and conundrums that no other would be able to see. I swear that
the universe was both infinite in its beginning and in its coronation
of an end. i swear that the light shines brightest when
the dark creeps down, embracing it, before it rushes.
f.g.
“ineffable”
too great or extreme to be expressed or described in words.
mankind has went through such inexplicable occurrences that
we have come up with makeshift words to let our sorrows
and impossible happiness drown a little bit easier.
for when you love too much and have never been given back
for when you speak to her until daybreak come, until silence perseveres
for when we scourge through sorrows even if we know it will bring us back again
for when you, cosmogyral, abound all of waves of torture
and astral silence and godlike dissipation and small talk
with the breakdowns we once knew
ineffable, or why i still love when it is committed to conflagrate.
ineffable, or why i still believe in love since inexplicably, and totally — i believe that it genuinely exists in the midst of the worlds waking.
g.g.
“tomorrow”
the day after today.
“good morning,” to the dew in its birthplace. sun
takes life out of soul and mishaps. sometimes
i feel like i am a machine of methylxanthine and
anti-depressants. i think you’re a cure, most of the time.
“good afternoon,” i bid to the mistakes that i had made
four years ago. four decades ago. i bid to the mistakes
that i had not made. an apology because i live, and
it lives alongside me.
“good evening,” i am one with nothing. the world is in
shambles, we watch and toast glasses, pretend that
we know so much from canvas and poetry — we don’t
even know where this is going. where we are going.
i apologize most of all for sixteen years ago. i didn’t
ask to be sent here. sixteen minutes ago, i didn’t want
to wake up i prayed to not. sixteen hours ago, i swore
to you that we would make a change. today i speak.
tomorrow i will wander. the television will not be
a death threat to my existence. the radio will not
be its discord to my faith.
tomorrow, my love. tomorrow we will not regret
the choices that we could not have made. tomorrow
we will love our self-proclaimed mistake made
sixteen years ago, ten months ago today.
m.r.
As for me, I don’t know what it is yet. But I swear I’ll keep writing until one day, I find it.