(Sadly, the poor-boy Blog has been neglected, so I figure these pockets of time should be put to good use.)

Sometimes it seems like these words don't belong to me, that they come from somewhere else and I grasp at them with my fingertips, like soap bubbles turned golden in the afternoon of memory. These words that flow right through me, though they're paired together in the narrow tunnels of the mind, twisting and turning until they exit my mouth, parading in twos and threes, sentences dressed up for a party. I try to write with these words, but they're like air or water or sunshine, never really mine to keep.
And these words escape me, flutter away on little translucent wings. In those salty-sweet memories: the grit of sand in your teeth, the laughter, the endless expanse of ocean straining to outdo the sky in her opulence. How things were easy and our speech loosened, words that were young and slightly tipsy lingering in the water, stained the bluest blue. But when the water turned red and suddenly everything mattered, those words fled into the sky to be replace with sounds more primal that cut and burned. I didn't know I kept a private store of words, tucked in my breast, but it seemed like even those weren't enough. My words were exhausted. They had fled for more temperate zones, escaping that red afternoon. When words fail, the best we have is the grasp of our hands, the warmth and touch that are meant to convey the same feelings as those mercurial words.
It was only later, as water (this time lukewarm and devoid of smell or taste) streamed down my face, that I realized that these words had left me. Perhaps the stinging in my eyes, which joined the rivulets down my back and legs, was because I was overwhelmed, left unbearably alone without any words to tell you how it felt. All I could do was cry and cry and cry, mourning the loss of my beloved words, the silence that accompanies the reverberations of shock. How could I tell anyone just how much it meant; how could I begin to explain that in those shards of bone and torn flesh we saw something unspeakable, something that made us afraid to even begin talking about the idea of loss?
These are not my best words. They are not the prettiest, nor do they have the sort of eloquence that should accompany these events. But I'm reaching, I'm grasping for something I can thread together, just to remember how to speak.
The tides will change, and these words will return to their natural ebb and flow behind my mouth. For now we're still practicing, remembering how they feel between the lips and teeth. They'll never be mine, but like birds and bubbles and sunshine and things that can't be owned, I'll always wish for them to come back, to visit again. So that maybe I'll never be alone, never be left without their company.