Strophios
And suddenly, a change. His face shifted, the smile fell away and settled, like some sort of geologic motion, into blankness, flatness. The happiness was gone, now just judgement.
I'm bleeding out, just sitting here bleeding out all over the goddamn table, the goddamn plates, and our goddamn conversation. Just bleeding out all over what we used to have and what we wanted to be.
That's really all this is, right? An embellishment?
I mean, the chances of saying something meaningful here, in this scant minute, are slim, so all we're really doing are taking the word and trying to work a bunch of other words around it. An embellishment, if you will.
I really don't know why I'm trying to do this now. I'm nowhere near the right frame of mind to just pick up "leathery" and go write about it. Things are wrong and a little bit of creative inspiration is not about to set them right.
The past participle implies success, completion. But that's not usually how it is. We are always grasp-ing, it is truly rare that the past participle is appropriate. But isn't that always the way it goes?
These words... It's really amazing how they seem to be so precisely chosen, each day, to fit my life. I mean, I know that's just the rule of fives at work, but really? "Flailing"? After an increasingly unpleasant breakup and trying desperately to decide my future?
Perfect.
Is it fatigue if you feel it all the time? If you're always tired, a problem, so to speak, at the level of conception, what can you do? How do you get enough energy to fill the great pit of ennui? What can you do?
If he just willed hard enough, it wouldn't be true. Maybe if he just refused to believe it, then it could not be. If he closed his eyes and waited long enough, it would go away.
Nope.
Sanctus, holy, sacred. But what is the difference between holiness and sanctity? Is there one?
Sanctity and sanctimonious. Cleanliness. Purity of truth?
Even keeled, is what they said, Patient, that too. That's not what they meant though. What they meant was cold. What they meant was they thought I couldn't feel. They were wrong.