Chain of Words

Chains of Words.

          Shayna was at a loss.

          Not just a loss for words. 

          That she’d been since way before Egypt,

           before the boy with the  wiry wayward hair standing up and swirling in every direction like a dizzy compass and the eyes that turned into empty black pools,

          before that half naked boy was rescued by the other boy, the one in the orange and black striped shirt, a cartoon cat in corduroy pulling a red Radio Flyer wagon down a rock strewn path,

           before she found her shirt lying on the wet soft ground near the licorice root of the  weeping willow tree whose branches offered her the protection she sought when she needed to examine her lopsided body,

           before she put that dirty knitted shell back on, to shaken to remember to rewrap herself, not able this time to rewind the movie and do the backwards dance with the long strip of torn sheet that made her look like every other girl with the washboard chest all ribs with two buttons, not this aberration with on soft mushy mound marring her perfect silhouette, not the freak that she was.

           Yes, Shayna was at a loss this time for sure when not even the words worked to bring her out of the darkness, when even the letter game couldn’t bring her to meaning, the connections too fleeting, the synapses snapped.

           valor    repel   lightning   gesture  evolution   nada   absolution   nest     triumph  

           she wrote furiously, on whatever scrap of paper she could find, torn from the dream catcher book with its colors running running running together with the water she’d dripped on the pictures she’d drawn with colored magic markers, pictures which gave substance to the barrage of images that flooded her when she closed her eyes and dropped down, down, down into the canyon of herself.

            hermes     salvation      nether     reality

            she wrote, not even looking at the paper, playing the game she’d created soon after Egypt to quiet her mind, to make the other words go away- the ones that the compass haired boy screamed into the void.

         Take a word any word and write it down then write the next one starting with the last letter of the one before it. Make a word chain. Forge meaning beginning with the ending. Make a perfect circle.

           

          yesterday   yonder     ruthless     stethoscope    éclair  

           When it was working she could hear the words snap into place, releasing the hidden story  trapped inside the chain.

            But Shayna was at a loss.

            Yonder yesterday the stethoscope ate a ruthless éclair.  

           Shayna began to panic.

           Hermes has no salvation in the nether reality, while lightning and valor gesture at the nest in triumph.

           That’s better, Shayna thought, exhaling and as she did, she realized she had been holding her breath.

           For a very long time.