I have stampeded through the hallways of words for a decade and a half.

I have perused shelves of tomes that many would prefer to burn like whiskey in a glass.

With feet flat on the ground, what is it I have found?

French must be grasped out of the air with kid gloved hands and clutched to the chest as if a sacred prayer.

Playing piano with the tips of fingernails and simple wisps of air.

Words trail off into ellipses, eclipses of hearts long buried.

The sounds are cloying, toying with the emotions of those just happily married.

German is a dull blade against the palm of a hand not quite in truth.

A march in formation with full military strength boots.

Pulled together with the gnashing of teeth and the hissing when they don’t quite touch.

Electric guitars and orchestral swirls, a strange kind of beauty that burns just enough.

Korean is malleable, butter slipping through fingers like hourglass sand.

Everything is as open as the door of a grandmother’s kitchen, yet able to stand.

Letting in the spring with a flourish of yellow flower print curtains.

The vowels are light as paper, skipping on air with a child’s flourish.

Japanese is stepping only with tiptoes, on a tightrope thin as a spider’s web.

A tiny stream rushing like a river with an outstretched hand if you let it.

Always moving, always shifting in the ever swirling, circling limelight of oceania.

A classic choir of beauty crossed with the edges of mania.

Spanish is the strumming of an acoustic guitar, like a deserted cobblestone street filled with hope.

Dozens of rainbow threads that change in the light like a kaleidoscope.

The woman on the sidewalk who teaches passersby every fluid step of meringue.

Rolling off the tongue, glittering voices and romantic spins until you happily faint.

Thai is well worn hands pulling taffy, a spinning wheel in the dancing sunrise.

Punches that do not land because of a roll in the laughing eyes.

Gentle, lapping waves, wet sand curled under tiny children’s feet.

A wind chimes’ whispers, tapioca pearls bubbling between the teeth.

Polish is the end of the frost, pinpricks of light making their way

An appeal to the heavens at the very top of the the lungs when breath has been running out for decades.

A snowflake, one arm broken, itching the freckles on the bridge of the nose.

An apron that stretches on for miles in the many times mended embroidery of great-aunt’s clothes.

Mandarin is fingernails on a curled in, wary palm, tiny cuts on tissue paper.

Knives that come from nowhere, blood dripping ink becoming a savior。

A piercing flute on the edge of a cliff, cloak’s clasp fluttering in the breeze.

A carnelian ribbon torn apart by wolves’ moon lit canines until it can barely breathe. 

Gaelic is skirts pulled up as bare legs giggle through knee high grass thick with dew.

The clambering of pots and pans as nieces and nephews run through the dining room.

The fierce stampede of horses’ hooves on packed down dirt roads trodden ages ago 

The fiddle player singing her song, still, rye bread crumbs to traipse back home.

And my own? 

Perhaps rain, perhaps snow?

Perhaps a desert, dry as gold?

Perhaps a lover or her ghost?

Perhaps the fire or its smoke?

But I realize I don’t know.