Wordicide
written by: Fenja Hill
Bleak. Now, there’s a word that does what it says on the tin. Bleak. Just think the word and the sky darkens. Wind mumbles through the gorse, close to the ground, failing to stir the grey clouds hovering listlessly, lacking even the energy to spit rain on the brooding, barren landscape.
Saying it aloud could bring roiling clouds prowling across the sky; a sense of something looming, menacing. Bleak, bleak, bleak, bleak, bleak, bleak.
Damn, damn, damn, damn, damn.
I’ve done it again. I’ve ruined a perfectly good word. My own fault, I should know better by now. Never, never, never say a word again and again like that.
Do not do it.
I do know better and I still screw up, every time. I never learn. Bleak, bleak, bleak, bleak, bleak. Now look. It’s not even a word any more, it has lost all meaning; I may have made it up; or, worse still, dredged it from the depths of Jabberwocky, not even made up by me, but by someone else.
It’s useless now, anyway.
I’ve killed it.
Wordicide.
And to make it worse, I think I may have killed damn as well.
- Wordicide - March 1, 2024
- The War Came - November 21, 2023
