eviscerate

Eviscerate is such a beautiful word for such a horrendous act. Torture is usually disguised in attractive clothing.

I could never remove the blood from language as easily as I remove the stockings from my legs each night, bent over the bed in a weariness that won't disappear. To remove the blood would stop the heart. I can't walk around barefoot without a pulse, you know.

A dead language is the saddest story never told. Our stories go unheard because the ears can't hear what hasn't been spoken. I speak to you with my fist full of my hungry heart. Here. Hear. It's here. It never died. I've been feeding it oxygen when you weren't listening. I've been telling it to breathe, breathe. I wait to hear it inhale before I exhale in relief.

So go ahead and interrogate and condemn. Take your knife and make a horizontal incision. The only thing you can remove is what I haven't used in an attempt to revive. I may be tired, but I am alive. I may keep pacing this floor, shuffling just enough to produce an electric shock. But at least there's a beat. At least there's a belief that language continues.

It continues in the eyes, in the fingers, in the soles of our bare feet.