“Words Don’t Fail Me” by Christina Knowles

I dance this pen across the world

and all I am is set free.

Words become separate

lives unto themselves,

free to roam and do as they please,

to be sucked up by thirsty souls

and to be tossed aside as waste by others.

Sometimes ignored, unread

but still looming, like ghosts

invisible but present

or taken and changed—

Emerging,

interpreted and reinterpreted.

Unrecognizable to their maker,

they stretch and encircle.

Sufficient to their purpose,

words don’t fail me.

Feelings impossible to quantify or understand

become tangible, ideas made substantial,

absorbed into the universe

yet marked as distinct.

Through words

I know and I am known

—Christina Knowles (2015)