A Woman of Many Words

I am a Woman of Many Words
I am drawn to all those places
        That words congregate:
                 Libraries and bookstores
                       Road signs and billboards
                             Ticket stubs and subtitles
                                    Nametags and license plates
Each one a journey driving inside me
I am a Woman of Many Words
I love the way the shapes feel in my mouth
The skittle taste of syllables
I am drawn to especially long words
With their phonetic entities stretching out like tentacles to reach new corners of pronunciation
Words like
              Bibliophile and flippant-irreverence
                      Evanescent and Insouciance
      Mellifluous and Effervescent
                                       Mondegreen and Labyrinthine
Words like
Onomatopoeia and Tintinnabulation
I appreciate their weight on my tongue
The way my hands appreciate the thickness that is a fat book
I am a Woman of Many Words
I am attracted to their multitude
The space their figures take up on a page
The calligraphic punches
Typed up by keys
The carefully constructed
Brush strokes
Spouting
What is sure to be, nonsense
But I do enjoy the sound of nonsense in the morning
I am a Woman of Many Words
I cling to the lettered skyscrapers wherever I can find them
Because the familiar scent of scribbles across parchment is comfort food for me
I find them
On the backs of cereal boxes
And in Popsicle riddles
In fortune cookies
And alphabet soup
From magnets on my fridge
To junk food logos
And I hold on to them for dear life
For fear that silence should find me
And leave me empty
For fear it will take away the music of maracas
Made by words
Dancing the salsa inside me

I am a Woman of Many Words
because Words
Answer my Questions,
Soothe my fears,
and Humor my Whims
They are not always Right
But they are always Constant
They are not always Honest, in fact,
Mostly
They Lie
But ever so often
They tell such a Beautiful Lie
That you wish it were true
They sing from the rocks
offering Escape from
Terrifying,
Suffocating,
Mind numbing Silence
that echoes off my skeleton
I am afraid that silence will hollow out my insides
and leave me abandoned
with nothing between my Bow and Stern
my Forecastle all torn up
I am afraid of the skeleton inside me
So I am a Woman of Many of Words
For fear of silence
And contempt for truth
Because my words are sirens
And my shipwreck is home here