A big bag of words

Posted on | December 29, 2008 | 4 Comments

I dreamed this morning that I had a brief and fiery love affair while in my early thirties with Zora Neale Hurston. I had blocked out the memory for decades because I didn’t know what to do with the hole our parting had left in my heart, but many years later friends brought me a bag full of words as if they were letters, and they were all from Zora, written for me.

When I say a bag full of words, I mean just that; a brown paper sack from the grocery store, wrinkled and soft with age, full of individual words on tiny slips of paper. Lined notebook paper, graph paper, linen flecked with colored fibers, newspaper edges, cocktail napkins, table napkins, torn backs of envelopes, backs of grocery store coupons. Each piece containing one word printed in neat, concise letters with black ink. I pushed my hands into the bag to sift through the fragments, remembering the way the skin on her face felt beneath my fingertips.

It was a close, humid summer afternoon and I sat in the shade of an ancient maple with the sound of cicadas buzzing from the tallest branches. I was old and tired and frustrated with my writing, one thought pulsing in my head: why did she keep all these words from me? I choked on a rising ball of resentment that pushed its way into my throat as I let a handful of words flutter to rest on my lap.

courage
flannel
linden
cardamom
enough
dilly
inside
begin

Then I woke to the cats fighting in the hallway outside my bedroom door. Two hours and two cups of coffee later, I can’t stop thinking about words.

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