Words by N A Mckay
They’d recently been words, and only words. Culminations of noises that were left to be interpreted. I knew how they would be, but I had peeled myself from their meanings and latched onto their consequences. What were once testimonials to the power of language became tools in my arsenal of complacency. They became a means-to-an-end and lost their inherent, gifted capabilities of expression. Because once one understands that the only verbal tether between emotion and expression are the words that one defines themselves by, manipulation becomes natural.
The issue, I discovered, was that the manipulation doesn’t end where you mean for it to. It writhes within your own identity and eats at the structure of what you believe to be without them. Through spinning cocoons of language to envelop yourself within, the windows soon become opaque. And whilst you keep the interrogators outside, you lock yourself in. Eventually, those words that you armed yourself with destruct and what you are left with is a lone question.
Who am I?
Because amid your manipulation (you really pat yourself on the back for this, too) you never stopped to gaze upon your surroundings, and your tethers melted, and reality became loose. You started to live within the world you built, and once you finally mustered the courage to free your tenant, you remained there, awakening from that drunken slumber, forgetful of who you were as the builder, and not as the tenant.
And so, you did exactly what was expected of you. You shaved down the walls and invited people within, patching up the holes with anecdotes and metaphors, high modality nothingness that echoed pretty melodies without any bassline. It didn’t matter that they were hollow words within simple scales, you only wanted the visit anyway. And often it didn’t matter that there was no opportunity for them to renew their lease, they understood the dance.
Eventually, you could leave the holes in the wall and wait for them to notice the entry. When they gazed within, it wouldn’t matter. By then, you’d armed yourself with language and spoke fluently in iambic pentameter. The opaque castle beamed through the clouds with a neon sign that read welcome.
And the power you felt, the intoxication of escaping where you needed to escape from, the intoxication of going where you wanted to go.
And the violent comedown that succeeded it, that thumping question that would not go away. It was written in the skies of your pretty, little town- Who are you? If you craned your neck and fixed your eyes before your feet, you’d find written in wet concrete Who are you? the stick that was its author tossed aside. And in the taste of the salty water running down your cheek you found your answer-
Nothing.
