A Thousand Words Later

A thousand words later, we were still talking. I know I’m being reflexive, this humor is a transparent way to paint clowns on speech bubbles. Ripostes that ricochet off any real wit. "I must be going." One thousand and forty. Later --- the replay, witty repartee are invented, not only as late additions but as inserts, edits in an ongoing discourse. Some words still hang in the air, digitalized like finger bones. I try to swat them with a rolled-up script, but they dance away, electric and blinking. (I wish there was a big red plug I could pull. A cut-off switch maybe, or lips that folded words into origami birds, each one so perfect that it would defy misinterpretation). One thousand and ninety-two. I begin to cough up these inner dialogues, to give up on mind-talk. My only remedy is to count more numbers, instead of words – words not spoken.