keytype

I punch keys and receive letters. It sounds angry, even physical, but it is not. Something delicate dances across my fingers—jumping from index to pinky, thumb to ring. As if something, someone is more responsible for the way in which the alphabet has rearranged itself, than even I. But why do I sit here, my legs entwined like a twizzler, feeding paper words instead of the space I currently exist around? I admit: my throat has lost the cords to make music through my mouth. I try to hear aloud these appearing words that hang effortlessly in the white air of the page, but the only product that takes form is the spittle that bubbles at the shore of my lip. I collect them like shells and string them together. But the necklace soon falls from my neck and locks itself around the belly of my heart. Too tight, a struggle to breathe for I am taken by these words and held inside the sentence of their meaning. Bounded by intent and caged in confinement by the periods that dress up the text like ornaments. Whether I may only see them and never hear them spoken, I will still try. Try and press my ear against the materiality of the text. Deny that the medium acts as a wall, dividing me from others, and what I need them to know. What is the purpose to this devastating mechanic of art? You!, beneath my text, behind that wall—can’t hear me, won’t speak. Art is supposed to help us pass through. But the wall has already been built, and you won’t say a word so I’m persistently trying hard to talk for you. Just listen, wait for the wall to fall, and hear my wind of words, the storm that stirs the silence.