WL --realities--thick in

Words left her, crawling away stealthily in the night. Yuki's English disappeared first, the more distant words leaving quickly and the closer, more familiar words departing more leisurely, slowly--returning ocassionally to tease her. Her Japanese stayed the longest--she still dreamed in Japanese, and the words seemed loath to leave her while the moon still reigned in the sky.

Yuki would wake the next morning, trying to think through thick banks of wordless longing. How did one say, "wake up?" How did one form the hunger for rice into words? Or ask "Where are you going?" when someone left the house? Amy made flash cards from the Sunday coupon supplements, and added large English words. Sophie added the kanji in a purple marker. Yuki shuffled through the cards again and again, laying them in straight rows (chicken, house, Rice-o-Roni, Snickers) and then on top of each other (cup, Calgon Bath, Colgate, Rite-Aid Aspirin).

For the first week after these flashcards, Yuki would parade around with a card until someone noticed and placed the object depicted on the card into her hands. Then she would nod, drop both the card and object and try again. Later, even this did not pierce the thick wordless void. Late that Sunday night, as the first snow in the season fell, she tore the cards up and plunged them into the fountain in the living room. The purple ink from the kanji merged with the overflowing water and puddled in deep lavendar stains on the beige carpet. Amy found the pulpy mass the next morning and started to clean up. Sophie woke from the windowsill and joined her.

"She was so silent, I never even heard her do this" Sophie exclaimed as they peeled the glue and pulp from the clay cliffs in the fountain.

Amy nodded. "We should have woken up, though. Her silence was too thick."

Sophie understood.

snow falls / thick in / urgent flurries / an individual only / from sky to ground / crystal edges / melt to / murky puddles

the word is / the sound / of water / dripping from/ ancient symbols / tiny particles / of merging / realities