“The mouth is where the body and language meet. The mouth is also the site of proper language and improper body. The proper body is regulated through language. Our mouths caution us to keep civilized, despite our bodies.”

                                                                                     -Anthony Farrington “Kissing”

 

“How easily the body opens. How with difficulty does the mouth in awe, in praise. For there are words I cannot say.”

                                                                                     -Lia Purpura “Autopsy Report”

 

For there are words I cannot find, but let me define a few I have.

 

I/me: sentience, consciousness, thought, or, with any luck, soul.

Body, proper and improper: the animate shell containing I/me and of which I demand much but have no control over.

Language: a system, distinct from I/me, also sealed within the shell, and of which I demand much but have no control over.

Detachment: the experience of having no control over the body or language.

Anxiety: a feeling produced from, among other things, detachment.

Dear language,

Let this be a formal declaration of complaint. I’m sorry to be confrontational, it’s only that personhood consists of you, me, and the body, and though each is distinct, we try to fuse our edges - grate and grind, jostle into more stable positions. I feel I’ve done what I can: I sew sentences into my clothes, truss myself in words so that maybe, from the outside, they can reach down, deep, to the bottom, to the cracks and bind them. Maybe they could still the tremors at my core.

Please reconsider your current silence, as I feel we have a good deal in common and could be great friends.

 

                                                                           Warmly once you’re malleable but until                                                                                 then, coolly yet cordially yours,

                                                                                                          Jana Purington