(for Me-K)

It was the language that left us first.

The Great Migration of words. When people

spoke they punched each other in the mouth.

There was no vocabulary for love. Women

became masculine and could no longer give

birth to warmth or a simple caress with their

lips. Tongues were overweight from profanity

and the taste of nastiness. It settled over cities

like fog smothering everything in sight. My

ears begged for camouflage and the chance

to go to war. Everywhere was the decay of

how we sound. Someone said it reminded

them of the time Sonny Rollins disappeared.

People spread stories of how the air would

never be the same or forgive. It was the end

of civilization and nowhere could one hear

the first notes of A Love Supreme. It was as

if John Coltrane had never been born.