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Does it make any sense, the way that some words boil inside of you, and you want more than anything to say them? You eat your breakfast with a smile on your face and you answer an email and you go see a movie and they’re there, those fucking words are there and they just hover at the back of your throat, under your uvula, in that place where that wad of phlegm sits first thing in the morning before you cough it out. M mmmm mmm. There they are under the mound of thickened spit, and you want to cough them out too, like an itch to be scratched or a piece of dust on the side of your nose that you can just make out in your field of vision. Get rid of it, you think, it’s abnormal.

They’re like mosquito bites, really, because when you say them, you feel better right away, sure, but then a few seconds go by and you need to say them worse than before. You can keep on scratching that mosquito bite all day long, you know, those really awful ones you get on your toes, and they’ll only get worse. They’ll only get way itchier and you’ll scratch and scratch, that wide-eyed look on your face that makes you look like some crazy janitor type, ranting about secret chemical dumps in the clouds, and you can’t be very attractive then. She’s gotta look at you and see you putting those damn words out there faster and faster, rocking in your chair and swirling a finger through a lock of your own hair and think, “This guy’s gone to Mars for a picnic!” and you have, for all the good it’s doing for you. You see, you can scratch an itch away by turning it into pain, drawing blood and ripping the skin off, but there’s nothing you can do with those damn words.

I mean, does it make any sense? Did our monkey ancestors press their tongues to the roofs of their mouths and find that they absolutely must go up to one of their baboonettes and screech out just those three screeches? No. It makes no sense at all. It makes sense that we can’t help but say “Look up! Fucking coconut dropping on your head!” or “Big tiger just over that hedge!” but there’s no emergency with those three words. There’s no immediate warning to howl out or dangerous argument to be contradicted. In the big scheme of things, the basic one with the food and water and shelter bit, those words don’t help anyone at all, so why are they so intense? Why do they paralyze you, make you blubbery and soft, unable to aim so much as your own piss into a toilet? They’re a mental illness, is what they are.

She lays in bed in front of me, her skin spotless and soft, curved against the mattress in the lamplight. I’m sure she’s asleep until she turns her palm back to me, her fingers thin and long. Just when I feel like I’m looking at a picture of her, she turns interactive and I take her hand and lay behind her. She cups it, girl-skin and comfort, coming home. She rubs the scar on my palm with her thumb for a while, as if asking me a question. I don’t answer. She takes my hand to her pussy, presses my middle finger into the wet and the red heat. My mouth goes to her ear because that’s where it’s got to go and I hold it open, tongue against my lower front teeth, and I fight.