something like how it feels

You wake up sweaty with words. You throw off your blanket, and it clatters onto the hardwood floor as a pile of black letters. The morning draft rushes over your damp skin. You scramble onto your hands and knees to reassemble b-l-a-n-k-e-t, but there are no roman letters, only strange characters lopsided and tangled. Eventually you piece together მატ­ყლის and crawl beneath its warmth.

Later, you realize you have forgotten vocabulary back at home. You have to go get it. You dial the airline and ask for a ticket to Orlando. You hear typing over the receiver. When the attendant finally speaks to you, the receiver acts like a sausage grinder, and the words coil into unrecognizable piles at your feet. This is not especially comforting. Should you call back and try them with your French?

You have your books, of course. When have they ever failed you? You open your backpack and go to grab your Georgian For Beginners. The paperback slips from your hand, and your fingers come out sticky with ink. The words are melting off of the page. There is some type of ontological contagion, you think. You chuck the book against the wall. It momentarily bursts into clarity, as if being run through a projector, before losing its integrity and oozing down the wall.

Then something comes to you. You concentrate on the English language while taking a pillow into your hands. You fluff it slowly before slamming it into the ground. It bursts into letters. You move around the room deliberately, smashing any object you can get your hands on. Letters are ricocheting wildly around the room. Bottles, dolls, vases, wax figurines–they all explode and scatter.

You stop. You’re breathing heavily now. There are only five letters, you think. You shuffle your feet along the floor and peer down as if you were searching for perfect seashells. One at a time, you pluck up the letters: s, i, g, w, n.

You walk outside and slap the letters onto your back in the correct order: w,i,n,g,s. You feel a sprouting. You walk to the edge of the yard where the land steeply drops off, and you look out at the mountains.