Ringless Carousing

Language is my mother, my father, my husband, my brother, my sister, my whore, my mistress, my check-out girl. Language is a complimentary moist lemon-scented cleansing square or handy freshen-up wipe-ette. Language is the breath of God. Language is the dew on a fresh apple. It’s the soft rain of dust that falls into a shaft of morning light as you pluck from a old bookshelf a half-forgotten book of erotic memoirs. Language is the creak on a stair. It’s a spluttering match held to a frosted pane. It’s a half-remembered childhood birthday party. It’s the warm, wet, trusting touch of a leaking nappy, the hulk of a charred Panzer, the underside of a granite boulder, the first downy growth on the upper lip of a Mediterranean girl. It’s cobwebs long since overrun by an old Wellington boot.