Writing Prompt: Whisper
Write a new post in response to today’s one-word prompt.
Most of what I write is an experiment where I allow words to cascade from my fingertips and walk about in the world, naked and unashamed. I let them roam free so they may discover themselves.
You could call me a word scientist. Forever exploring the strengths and weakness of words, even the history of words, where they were born, how they lived, and how those who use them have been transformed.
I am in a writing lab, surrounded by flasks filled with potentially volatile words. It is quiet there, so that I can meditate on my next experiment. I whisper to the words, and ask them to show me what happens when I mix them together. I add drops of words into an empty flask, then pour a cup of words atop what may or may not explode. The words combine and foam into sentences, then paragraphs rise to the top of the flask and spill over onto the table. I whisper to them, ask them what it was like. Sometimes they answer, in whispers barely audible. Other times, they wait to be rediscovered in new ways.
Dozens of flasks litter the table, each now with varied mixtures of words, reacting in expected and unexpected ways. Some good, some bad. Some inert, others poison to the touch. I continue to delve into the science, to see what it unearths. Words bubble, freeze, catch fire, and sometimes turn to fog. Always, they are there, coming together to teach us that which we didn’t know yesterday.
Sometimes they come in whispers. Sometimes they come without care. But always they come.
The flask contains a 20 cantos poem distilled down to a haiku that catalyzed a reaction that caused a miasmata vapor that purged the room. Tomorrow I will try to distill this same canto down to a cinquain. If this attempt does not work I could be looking into the abyss of an apocalyptic elegy. Note, bring enough words to put out flames if I survive.
Drop into the cauldron one etymologist and one philologist and boil.