“Darling, be a dear and grab me a beer.”

She never knew what to say, so she went to the word hose looking for some inspiration.

She turned on the word hose by degrees, letting the words march from the spigot like orderly soldiers at first. She watched them pile up in a tidy row before becoming bored by the procession. Impatient, she gave the knob a 360 degree crank, even if it meant a few numbers mixed in with the flow. The words began to tumble, nosedive, swim, stretch, sink from the spigot, comingsoquickthattheywerentquitesotidyanymore. The words started to curl… and stack…and dogpile…and tackle until she decided she must tame them. So she spread them out like jam on bread, smooth in some places and clumpy in others. She tiptoed through the fields of letters, careful not to step on an abandoned “W” or a lowercase “i” or a naked “K.” She made sure not to separate “Q” from “U.” She added periods and commas, but the words sensed that the punctuation was an effort to tame. They charged from the spigot—a nosebleed of consonants. They rushed her, drove her into the corner, and began again to stack, and stack, and stack, and click and clack, and brick and brack, and tick and tack, and knick and knack, and panic attack! Until she was covered in by an army of hungry syllables. They scorched and they burned even where they petted and soothed. They wove manacles out of sentences, twirling like ribbons on a maypole around her arms. The words formed barricades around her in their soundlessness.

She still didn’t have a response. But she wouldn’t be grabbing a beer anytime soon.