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Description
some people
(the lucky ones)
get songs stuck in their heads.

i, on the other hand,
am left with words
that beat incessantly against
the confines of my brain.

last week, it was "gossamer."
i thought it was whimsical;
that was pleasant.
i saw the word
every which way i turned:
a gossamer veil of sunlight,
a silk shirt like gossamer,
a spider hanging by a thread of it.

i hate the word now,
with all its whimsy washed away;
the hard g is too harsh and garish
against the roof of my mouth,
the double s too serpentine.
it feels numbingly stiff on my tongue,
like some sort of linguistic anomaly,
a could-be word that really shouldn't be.

today, it was your name.
(i never thought
proper nouns counted, but
evidently, they do.)
i didn't see you as much as i heard you,
somewhere,
in the whistling of the breeze
or the creaking of the hardwood floors.
your imposing yet warm presence
hovered somewhere
near the nape of my neck.

i admit that somewhere
in the recesses of my mind,
i hope that
my tongue never tires
of curling around your syllables,
no matter what scars
your consonants carve in my throat,
no matter what holes
your vowels leave in my lungs.

Description
some people
(the lucky ones)
get songs stuck in their heads.

i, on the other hand,
am left with words
that beat incessantly against
the confines of my brain.

last week, it was "gossamer."
i thought it was whimsical;
that was pleasant.
i saw the word
every which way i turned:
a gossamer veil of sunlight,
a silk shirt like gossamer,
a spider hanging by a thread of it.

i hate the word now,
with all its whimsy washed away;
the hard g is too harsh and garish
against the roof of my mouth,
the double s too serpentine.
it feels numbingly stiff on my tongue,
like some sort of linguistic anomaly,
a could-be word that really shouldn't be.

today, it was your name.
(i never thought
proper nouns counted, but
evidently, they do.)
i didn't see you as much as i heard you,
somewhere,
in the whistling of the breeze
or the creaking of the hardwood floors.
your imposing yet warm presence
hovered somewhere
near the nape of my neck.

i admit that somewhere
in the recesses of my mind,
i hope that
my tongue never tires
of curling around your syllables,
no matter what scars
your consonants carve in my throat,
no matter what holes
your vowels leave in my lungs.