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The words coming out of my mouth

 

These days I wear a mask. I don't wear a mask all of the time, only when I am indoors or unavoidably up close with people who I don't usually interact with.  I wear one when I am ordering things, or buying things or attempting to enjoy some form of public entertainment.  I cannot rely on reading others lips. My lips are hidden. We ask each other to repeat.  We move our eyes or our whole heads to try and enunciate more clearly. 

I say fewer words, more carefully chosen words behind the mask.

Sometimes that is helpful, sometimes that just causes more confusion.

I walked into the woods. I did not need a mask.  I only saw a few other people and they were distanced. Masks were unnecessary.

After so much talking and not talking and avoiding talking out loud I am forced to examine when I speak and when I choose not to. This is not a bad thing since I can be an insufferable chatter box, just a new thing for my brain to adjust itself to.

When I am not standing around in a mask, I am conducting business and friendship behind a screen, I can control my background.  I can make it seem like I am talking from a Hawaiian beach or a library in France.  No lip reading is required , no lips, just words, spell checked and proof read and strained through power points and algorithms.

When I sat across from someone in real life recently. an unbidden thought came, insistent.  Can't I just email you? A weariness settled down on my bones.

The effort to regale my companion with interesting anecdotes and keep them grinning with one liners like I usually relish doing overwhelmed me.   I resorted to poking fun at our neighbour's haircut, complained about the music. 

I left having said less than I should have, more than I wanted to.

As I stood on the edge of the forest, the words I wanted to say, spilled out. What I needed to say, what I should have said came rushing past my lips.  They rushed out so violently that I could not take them back and they were not filtered by a mask or a screen. They flew with force into the ears of dragonflies and the secret vaults of mushrooms and tree cells, held there in their folds for safe keeping.  



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Comments

  1. Kate Hall10/24/2020 6:59 am

    I loved! and know this feeling. and worry it like a dangling thread.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. MotherOfGooses10/28/2020 11:14 am

      Kate! So nice to see your words. Hoping for the best for you my friend!

      Delete

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