gudubara

It was summer. He braided daisy chains and called them flowers; she tangled words and called them speech. I was the only one who knew the truth; that the thin lines of cellulose that run beneath the tender skin of a leaf are not so different from the veins of blood and sentiment that pulse through syllables as they smack against your teeth. I was the weaver. To the art of his flower arranging, I added in her words, until it was no longer clear whose work was whose. I taught her poetry, and he taught me composition. She taught nothing in particular --except how to laugh at the arching of a word or the stress of a phrase, and w