Words Words Word

There are too many words and no right way to put them together.

Once upon a time, the nocturnal winds whispered at my window with a voice as ragged and traveled as the oldest soul, stirring me to drop my cigarette. My down pillow caught on fire. I stopped it from spreading by folding the pillow and clapping it against itself. Flaming feathers flew around the room, as though defying the wings they were plucked from.

I thought I’d never forget the sight of wild beauty burning through the air, the smell of it dying into a crisp. Where time decayed memory, written words preserved the moment. A short story for a class remembered me, the little author girl who played with words and made characters she never had the courage to be.

Enter Faith: her white dress flowing behind and her red curls cascading down her back, threatening to burn the cloth into ashes and leave her exposed. Her smile and green eyes announce that she doesn’t care; she wants to be exposed. Her face is bare of makeup, but dotted with freckles that beg to be connected into some fascinating picture. She speaks with an unexpected husk that one can only get from experience or smoking.

“Dance with me,” she says. Anyone would be shaken by a woman with that much confidence dripping off her voice.

Faith lived on those pages for five years, entombed in neatly labeled file folders and forgotten by her creator.

“I’ve been busy,” I tell her.

She says, “With what?”

“Growing up. You should try it some time.”

“I would if you’d write me that way.”

“I didn’t know how to write it then.”

Since her birth and my abandonment of her, I’ve lived through my death and countless endings. My real name comes from the Greek for resurrection and I’ve fancied myself a phoenix. Flaming feathers fly and defy.

“Can you write it now?” she asks.

There are too many words and no right way to put them together.