Words that flow, like eyes that see the bluest moon, leave me breathless. Lavishly they give meaning, a justice that endures. Where they begin, clear and steady, leaves a wide range of emotions that is ushering these words I write in praise. I see windows within my soul open up with these words. These are not words deep or profound. No need for prose that deplete. Rather these words lift like air when eyes read them out loud.

Wherever they erupt, every time, they emit fire, these words fight battles that burst open a heart’s desires. These are not words uncombed or falling apart. They are not words untied like shoes or caked in dirt from mud. They are words that stare, those that burrow deep, questioning nothing, but asking everything. Neither unblinking or unabashed, these words neither hover nor settle like flies where dead things lay. Rather the breathe of each word, every single letter used, like lipsticks on lips thick, is unflinching as it is bold.

Each word forces you to look at everything. Insist that everything looks at it too. Words we know and those we don’t. Those that speak truth and those that seek it too. Those that begin things, a dream, another way of living supreme. Words naked like light or those perishable at night. Those that uncover rotted leaves, or those that shovel out all our disbelieves. Words for the dust that rises or the dirt they hide. Words that imprint, those that delight, those quiet, those strangely pleasant, all the ways they cling together, lifting off pages, together, intoxicates.

The one who who write these words, how they build them like nest, stick by stick, word by word, all the ways they make it their own, brash and brazen, daring and dashing, not weak, but wild, not cautious but courageous, every single time leaves me breathless.

Keep them and their words.

I have been re-reading Toni Morrison’s The bluest eyes with a new lens. I read it a long time ago and kept my copy for a moment like now, when all I want to do is study how the masters play with words. She is one I wish could come back again and again to teach and reach every single crevice where I hope words can begin in me. Her gift is unlike no other and The bluest eyes captivates as it stirs. Re-reading it again, but this time with a lens focused on things to keep, leaves me drunk with all the words she deftly put together to tell a story. I’ll break my thoughts about the book one day, but in the meantime what I wrote above is in praise of this woman, who still teaches what to keep, long after she took her last breath. She is the master of this thing I mean when I say what will you keep. You might as well keep your stories or words that leap out of pages. Either, I am studying the master and she truly intoxicates.