The Weight of Words

by Mark LaMonda

They grow heavier as I age.

I find myself dropping them.

Some I can gather back up

and slip into my socks,

others shatter into tiny balls

and bounce away,

like mercury from a childhood thermometer.

The real bastards adhere and calcify,

becoming part of every other sentence,

despite swatting at them

and telling them to back away.

But there are words

that are not words

and they shimmer through my veins;

these words

that are really an image that I once

needed many words to evoke.

These words consume the sunrise,

the sound of birds,

even the sound of my love

slapping her bare feet on our second story floor –

While I sit below trying to find the words for my poem.

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Mark LaMonda is an artist and writer who lives in Santa Clarita California. His work has appeared in Painted Bride Quarterly, Lullwater Review, and is forthcoming in Tough Poets Review, January House Literary Journal and South Florida Poetry Journal.