First words carved from stone.
Chips fly and sting when they bite
Cheeks and forehead and forearms,
Tiny welts, hard to see, but they're still there.

Later words moulded from grey, colourless clay.
Too wet and hesitant and sticky to hold a form.
They want to slump again into an unformed mass
Like the one from whence they came.

Words scraped now in hard-packed, ****-bound soil,
Each requires pulling and tearing to take the slightest form.
A rain comes before the phrases could all be scraped together,
The concrete-like surface quickly softening into mud
Soon it's as if they were never said at all.