I keep words in my pockets—stuffed
together, scribbled on pieces
of lined paper, mingling with coins and
Trident wrappers, afraid of getting lost
in the wind, of being forgotten.
Sometimes I pull them out (haphazard,
less of an art than probability), and
weave together the words with thread
I pull from thamu’s shawls, with hyphens
in-between—each thought incomplete,
on the tip of my tongue—and
I craft lines in a language I no longer
remember, with syllables escaping
my mouth like the scratching
of nails—not the music I recall,
often nonsense—and
I reached into my pocket today, and
failed to find a word, all of them
gone, used, forgotten—and
I cried, silent.