"Senescence...I like that word."
"How about sibilance? That one is nice too, no?"
I told him I thought it was a pretty word, he told me that it “rolls off the tongue like a smooth candy”. My heart skipped a beat. What a beautiful, elegant, practically sensuous simile. Just saying it out loud rolled off the tongue – there must be a term for that. It’s like onomatopoeia but with a whole expression, so very delicious. I can taste it on my tongue when I read it, and it makes it all the more magical.
Another friend laughed when I told her I had been seduced by a simile, and told me that I was one of the only girls she knew who is “hot for words”. And indeed, that’s what it is. Seduced by similes, turned on by metaphors, so long as they are placed properly, tickling my fancy when that part of me is ready to be appealed to. He’s quite good at that, now that I think about it. Interjecting Shakespeare, using subtle language, adding in the occasional simile, or “just having fun” with Elizabethean pronouns...if he were the right gender, I would be well on the way to being seduced. As is, I’ve given him my metaphorical heart, I’ve entrusted him with knowledge of myself that precious few hold
What a fatal weakness it could turn out to be, this addiction to words and their sensuality.
Perhaps that’s why I can find myself so irrevocably drawn to the girls with long flowing hair and deep, liquid eyes that represent The Gypsy and movement, or to quiet, gentle and sweet boys who draw out my words like strokes on a canvas with their kindness, or to intellectuals who are practically dangerous in their knowledge of me and of others. Archetypes, stereotypes, or brand new definitions of themselves, they pique my curiosity and bend my mind.
Not lust, not seduction, not enamoured or in love, but simply drawn, like a moth to a flame, to those who send off warmth. The fact that they can speak, spell and write doesn’t hurt either, of course.
Lines of past text that I’ve written come back to me, and make me smile wryly. “She was incredibly aroused by the expressions he used, and she was sure he knew it, could just imagine the oh-so-innocent grin on his face as he fed her lines of poetry and talked in images.”
Funny, how our mind works. How a phrase, a composition of words can launch a whole series of emotions, arousal as much as curiosity, and that ineffable feeling of wanting. Wanting to understand, wanting to feel, wanting to know. Trying to see how the words click together and appeal deep down within ourselves, to that subconscious (or perhaps conscious) part that understands language, feels the other and defines empathy.
Today, I loved a phrase, and words poured out of me. I wonder what tomorrow will bring...