Wandering Words, Querulous Questions

An octogenarian prose poem

Where do words come from? From books? Or from nurseries, classrooms, bedrooms, boardrooms, casual conversations? From a lover’s breath? From whispers, whimpers, arguments, anger?

Where do they go? Are they wandering the mazes of the mind, or lingering in locked closets, or moldering in chests with no keys?

Are they buried like clippings in a file folder or fading away in forgotten notebooks? Do they rust in the rush of remembering, to slough off, fall off, float free from sentences?

As I age, I lose the words I’ve heard, like raindrops dithering in the dirt, mist rising in the waning light.