Substituted Words

Substituted Words

(“Above all that you guard, watch over your heart, for out of it are the sources of life.” Proverbs 4:23)

I substituted words for the words I forgot,
I rearranged numbers for the numbers not
remembered,
and I left uneasy parentheses for action words,
verbs and metaphors I would have used a
decade before.

Then I could do nothing to sleep, my pain fading this
past week,
but new meds may have sucked things I knew
and threw them past the black hole at the back
of my mind beyond retrieval.

I do not mind missing a photo or two,
or misapplying the labels to faces I once knew,
my passion once replaced the empty lags
between the last sentence and the next.

I knew so much when I was young,
few songs were unsung,
fewer words left dangling from my tongue,
with point after point strung in neat array,
a necklace of beads and a word bouquet
to take away with you into the night.

Now I’m not clever enough to offer a single perfume
awaking remembrance of my words. I’m tired
or pained, either one sapping my usual elocution.

Could I transfer my heart strings to yours, I would not,
out of fear the person pain has made me. I have worn out
my apologies and met someone else face-to-face without
words to describe the tears and frustration that have replaced
the man I once was.

Fill me now fuller than I’ve ever requested, for the ink smears
with my tears,
and disappears once I wake without dreaming.