I prefer unspoken words.
Books, letters, texts.
I won’t believe anything you say to me, but if you text it to me I might find the truth in the margins of your midnight paragraphs. You’ve found the truth in mine time and time again. We only have so many midnights left to live, anyway.
My vocal cords are unreliable, quivering, and shaking even in the least stressful situations. My pen and journal, however, are never reckless. The rhythm of my quill’s sweeping loops is unwavering, consistent, and dependable. The scritch-scratch of my pitiful words on the page is like white noise to me; the messy calligraphy attempts in the margin are the code by which I live; the crossed-out screw-up words give humanity to my prose.
I prefer my own words to remain unspoken.
Talking is too casual; I lie and I stutter and I trip over my own thoughts, jumping through hoops just to tell you I love your shirt. Everything is a soliloquy when I’m the one speaking.
In the moment, I lose what I’m trying to convey through unrehearsed, superfluous, regretful rambling. I bore myself with stories. I would rather die than hear my own voice one more time. Because my voice is tired, and I’m tired of it. Nothing I’ve ever said has ever meant anything to anyone, yet I won’t shut up. I keep talking with my useless phrases and laughing my foolish, embarrassing laugh and singing my stupid songs. Each time I speak, I feel like the court jester for the royal court of normality and conventionality.
The backspace button is my savior; I cannot stutter with the ability to endlessly edit my sentences. My fragmented ideas of fraudulence fall apart as they crumble in my hands. Sandcastles of grayscale ash fall to the ground at my gaze, but only when I speak.
When I write, I can shift the ash as I please. I sift through the shattered palaces, picking and choosing the curable shards that fell into the moat, sopping wet with remorse, giving them their second chance that I never got.
I dig through the rubble for the parings of the pillars of my secular piety. I’d rather dedicate this life to reconstruction than give something new a try.
Revision is my religion. My words are stupid, but they’re ever-so-slightly less stupid when they’re revised into the format of a 450-word column.
I prefer unspoken words.
Because I have a voice that shakes and a mind that thinks in eulogies. Eulogies for people full of life; eulogies that my anticipating brain writes in advance to soften the blow.
I’m tortured by my spoken words, and I’m tortured by my unspoken words.
