Little Ghosts

By Margaret Borchert

There is an uncountable number of words in my head, in my body, in my soul. Like snakes they slither through my veins and arteries, squeezing through the capillaries and into my flesh. They provide me with substance, sustenance, they are what I live on, more important to my sanity than any food or water or company.

Words are what I breathe. In and out, caught behind my teeth and lips when I remain silent but forever present in my mouth, my tongue constantly making their shapes. Little ghosts living in my lungs.

Words settle like bricks in my bones. Heavy weights pulling me back down to earth, keeping me grounded at the price of flight. Every weighted word is another strain on my muscles, my neurons snapping to make the connections of sentences long past and yet to come.

These words have been both my best friends and worst enemies since the dawn of time, since I first cracked open a book and began to understand that a million words can mean the same thing and yet be completely different. It is the distinction between pill and poison, between dead and gone, between God and deity. A word is your point of view, your own little piece of truth in a world where you can’t trust anything.

But it’s a double-edged sword: words will elude you, they will trick you, they will burst from your hands and mouth when it is most wise to remain silent. Words form your opinions, your personality, your perceptions but when you need them most, they’ll vanish.

A single word can change everything, a single mistranslation can and will make a story or conversation about something else entirely.

Words are my saviors, my salvation, my religion but they are also my hell, trapped in the base of my spine and the back of my neck, behind my eyes like a film covering my vision. Words make everything both clearer and more obscure.

Every breath I take is another word caught in my throat, choking me until I force it out. It will never stop and I don’t know if I want it to.