A Wordy Eulogy

I once wrote that we are taught to butcher the English language in school. To slash through it, break it
down into unrecognizable pieces, beat the life right out of it and hang up its pieces for everyone to see.
That we are forced to cut up its endearing little twists and wrestle it down into perfectly poised
professional sentences, churned out of a weathered conveyer belt.

Now, head slightly clearer from the anger that plagued me then, I wonder. Maybe it wasn’t what I was
taught, but simply what I allowed myself to do. More work, more essays, more analyses and godforsaken
research papers. Cut out the twirls and cheeky comments, the little cracks of color. No time. Show don’t
tell until showing takes stress and sleep and sanity and people see it all the same and no one cares and no
one notices and no one takes a second glance except for you. And when the darkness comes knocking at
your door once again, to steal your warmth and energy and life, you lay down and let it, the words that
used to keep it at bay mutilated and bleeding, scattered on the floor.

Learned about what made the language tick and didn’t stop dissecting until my own words stopped
breathing. Diced them up nice and neat, cooked them up and served them, smiling over the smoke of their
burned bodies. Look at them! Pretty and nice and straight, easy for consumption! No need for any more of
the tedious think-thoughts. I’ll beat them up and break them down till there’s no annoying poke in your
throat as they go down, never fear. Chug them down, in one go!

It’s no surprise then, that they died. I drank up their life like a leech, pulling them down to drown
alongside me until they were just as empty as I am. The hollowed husks I now drag along the page are all
that remain. Pretty on the outside, sure—old habits die hard—but take another look and see that they are
counterfeit. They are empty. As dead as the person who yields them.

Hide under so many layers of sarcasm you forget what you’re trying to say. You pretend you’re saying
anything at all. You dress the corpses up in sharp and shocking garments, sparkly trinkets that take the
spotlight while you fumble about for any semblance of meaning. You lie and lie and lie until you make
yourself believe there’s anything behind the plastic sheeting.

Now I’m stuck facing the darkness on my own. The words that used to keep it back, who used to burn
with so much light and life one would hardly dare remember the feeling of emptiness moments before, are
gutted and shriveled up from the sun. I’ve killed them. I watch the Golden Boy I know spit out paragraph
after paragraph of stories bursting at the seams, while my words trickle out slowly, congested in my throat
and unable to come out. Two words, one hour. Ten words, five days. I try to write, but nothing comes out.
It seems I don’t even have the strength to drag around corpses anymore.