There are words that are people, words that live. Words like plumeaux, fat, mythical, snuggling warm words. Words like dash – where – I – skip a beat – and fall – and slip-slip-slide my way across the paragraphs and jerkily into the new space. I like words. I like their power. Their glower. The way they scrub and scour the page, the you, the person you were before, the way you once thought. Words that stand up and castle, fortifying themselves against each other, words like castle and battle and rattle, words so similar and so different, bumping jumping fighting for space. I like words. I like the dreaming of words, the heating, the eating, the burning summery Sunday yearning of words. I like the way nonsense makes sense and how you can be everything and nothing all at the same time all balancing on the placement, the string, the tight tight rope of the sentence. I like the balancing, the fraternising, the way fat looks complete and whole, and the way cat tails away at the end, sidling from you before you’ve even finished realising what you have in front of you. Words that push, fuss, muss up their hair, and get away before you’ve tamed them, named them, even begun to know them.
I like words.
Daisy May Johnson 