I like to roll words around in my mouth,

clicking against my teeth, swirling in my cheeks,

melting on my tongue like sugar crystals and cotton candy.

 

Each one has a different flavor, you see,

and if I let them collect behind my lips

like precious pearls and eon-smoothed stones,

eventually they can plop into a conversation,

kerplunk!

like a freshwater river rock in an ice cold stream,

perfect and scientific and natural,

like it was meant to be there.

 

Sometimes there is a sandy shift and grit between my gums, though,

when words have been there too long

or they fall into my sentences by accident,

slipping between my teeth and

wedging themselves into sticky syntax.

 

What a waste of a perfectly good word,

gangly and stuck between upright phoneme pillars

like someone's white picket fence

lined up next to moldy wood posts.

Sometimes words just don't work the way you want them to.