Chasing words is best left to wordsmiths

I can always tell when you think I’ve been neg­lect­ing you. Your curves become jagged edges, and your stems sud­denly seem to stretch to the skies whilst your drops caress the gravel on the ground beneath your feet. Your full stops become aggrav­ated stabs at the page, and then in the next instant there’s not an exclam­a­tion mark in sight. Thankfully.

I admit that I dabbled, I strayed, I dal­lied else­where. I played with paper planes and flir­ted with thoughts of grandeur. A desire for renais­sance. But you have a way of put­ting me in my place, remind­ing me. So remind me now, in this moment when I need my memory jogged and my con­science pricked.

This is who I am and what I am. This is what I do. It may never pay the angrily red­den­ing bills slap­ping onto the doormat, and it cer­tainly won’t solve the prob­lems of the world and his wife either near or far — whether they are sighed deep into my ear canal in the dead of night or glimpsed in dir­ect sun­light from fur­ther away than my eyes can com­fort­ably see. It won’t smooth the ridges in the car­pet or open up exclus­ive doors. It won’t cause the stars to shoot out of the pitch black vel­vet to light my path. It will never cure every anxi­ety, every ill, every fallen wish or unvar­nished truth that hides behind these eyes.

I’ll sit on the roof of this burn­ing build­ing then, gaz­ing down at the thin layer of snow that is mak­ing a pre­tence at cov­er­ing the pave­ment. I’ll watch the anim­ated dots wav­ing and scur­ry­ing, beck­on­ing for me to make my decis­ive move. But I won’t. I won’t move a muscle. I won’t chase. I’ll do what I always did, and simply con­cen­trate on the task of join­ing these words together to build a fire escape, a stair­way down which I shall make my swift exit into some­where. Some­where else. Bet­ter. Different.

(Of which I am not one, incidentally.)