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.
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