I’m collecting all the words. Constantly. Picking them up. Sliding them into my arms, more words than I can hold. More words than I can understand. I’m scooping them up. Consuming them. Keeping them for myself. All the words. I want all the words. I grab and grab and grab the words. All for me. All for me. I pick them out of books and articles, out of peoples’ mouths and make them my own. I take all the words. Grabbing at them violently. Desperately because I need them so bad. I need them so badly. I take all the words. I bite at them, feel around for them, even in the darkness, even when there are no words left to latch onto, I feel for them. I’m collecting all the words. I’m writing them down. My fingers swiftly moving across the keyboard. My body moving to the rhythm of some sad indie song that I’ve heard about a thousand times before. Because I crave the comfort of what’s known and predictable. The same way I read the same book over and over again because I like endings I’ve already heard before. Otherwise, I hate endings. I hate saying goodbye. I hate people leaving. I hate words being thrown out and then never being given back. I can’t keep giving my words away to people when they aren’t returning them back. I can’t do it. So I take them. I take them all. Wrap them up into poems and prose. I keep wrap wrap wrapping. Not stopping. Not breathing. Not for anything because I need the words so desperately. I pick them out of the empty air. And water them until they bloom, nurture them until they grow up. Tie them up. Beautify them for the world to see. And then slowly, when I feel ready, which is not often, it takes time, and effort and a lot of self loathing and self love at the same time, I release them. My little butterflies, floating into the world, a world so encapsulated with hate. Trying to send them to grasp onto any form of love that they can find, letting their little wings fly above and beyond, in the direction of places I myself can never go.