Dear Words

Why is it that the older I get, the more everything feels like a subtraction, a taking away?
Sometimes the letters of the alphabet look foreign like a lesson I learned a long time ago.
Sometimes the letters look as new as the first complete sentence I ever remember writing
in second grade: I wnt to be a snger. I remember exactly how I misspelled each word.
Sometimes I remember my first urge to write. The letters scattered like leaves around a tree.
I used to stare closely at the nib of the pencil, watching graphite pulverize itself into dust.
In high school I wanted to write like Emily Dickinson— a logic of words as tight
and close as vines darkening a stone wall. Hungry vines to squeeze out all the light.
I used to think nature was innocent. Now I think nature wants to live at all costs.
That God doesn't discriminate against chaos. When I think of second grade,
the words return to letters. The pages come back to me empty.
I feel a twitch of chaos in my fingers. A need to create. A song. Yes, I would sing if I could.

Esther Sadoff is a teacher and writer from Columbus, Ohio. Her poems have been featured or are forthcoming in Little Patuxent Review, Jet Fuel Review, Cathexis Poetry Northwest, Pidgeonholes, Santa Clara Review, South Florida Poetry Journal, among others. Her debut chapbooks, Some Wild Woman and Serendipity in France, are forthcoming from Finishing Line Press.