trending velocities

It took me seven years—from prospectus to defense—to complete my dissertation. 

For much of that time, questions of what to say and how to say it so consumed my conscious awareness that there was little left for anything else. I asked my internal GPS to pilot me from one moment to the next, ignored half of its commands, and corrected course only when the road narrowed into a dead end. 

Now that I’m done—sitting here in my reading chair, focused on my breath, watching my rowdy and relentless thought patterns with bewildered sadness—I find myself yearning for silence. 

I want nothing from language except song, a poem from Joy Harjo, the whispered refrain of water over rocks, or the laugh of my beloved warm beside me. 

I have too long been lost in a wilderness of cranky words.