The Ladies of Horror
Picture-Prompt Writing Challenge!

And the Drowning Will Be the Easy Part
by Amanda Worthington

It was love at first speak

Your bright words filling me in

Like I was born just an outline

And you had come to give me

Light, dimension, meaning

.

Chaos and drive define purpose, I decide

And the pressure with which you shade me in

Is just right

Precise and practiced in a way that shows me

You’ve learned the wrong way to proceed

And have risen above the carelessness of immaturity

I wish I could say the same

The least I can do is let you teach me.

.

Then one day I can no longer feel what makes me me

So skilled are you at your craft

I only look like some new iteration of you

But darker

.

Not quite daring to say what we mean to

Afraid of making some mistake we can’t take back

We languish.

.

And how long do we sit like that?

The coarse wood of our solitary souls made smooth

Imbued with the spirit of the infinite

Uncertain in the quantum silence

That leaves us tongue-tied

Not because we have nothing to say

But because we’re not sure how to let it out gradually

.

Words are like water that way

Life-giving

Life-taking

The utterance of the cosmic

Come to fill in the void

Until it no longer recognizes the sound

Of its own echoes

.

The words can drown us if we aren’t careful

They must be released…

Slowly

With great knowing of the power they wield

.

But I have lost the ability to be careful

.

If this is the end

Then at least I know I still have

Some molecule of self

Left to get angry

.

It is my only solace

As the waters rise.

.

.

Fiction © Copyright Amanda Worthington.
Image courtesy of Pixabay