These Three Words

How I hate these three words...

How they never fit, were never enough, nor ever felt to fit what I wanted to say but did not have the words, the reason, the knowledge or silver tongued savvy to express. Simple letters, that have been drawn so thin and washed out over the years. Worn, beaten, and ground down in that tragic sense of ritual with every morning separation and evening return. The once sweet, tender, perfect flavor of them, having grown bland it seems in the endless mundane functioning of "US".

How I loath this empty phrase...

That triad of cobbled, hobbled, wobbly consonants and vowels. Uttered so often, to often, with lackluster regard to their intended true meaning that has somehow slipped past the minds ability to catch, grasp, and assert. Spoken with soulless, mechanical precision, lock step, by rote. This phrase, that expression which to my deepest shame, my most horrible measurement of inner heart, I may have taken for granted.

How I detest these vocal tones...

Incomplete they remain, forever falling shy of their intent, failing to create that sense of meaning that I so burn to tell. Cheap, vacant, hollow these oral sounds are when compared to that endless treasure trove of memories, those spiritual, mental renderings of past emotion, and feeling. Such deep wells of the being that have seals that could never ever be broken open with words so laughably simple, so terribly unfulfilling, by comparison.

How I fear to hear them...

For I question, I worry, I am afraid that I failed to use them enough. The pain, the sharp cut to my core that I feel, from the knowing, the knowledge of how they might have missed you. That they may have been unable to reach you? How the secret, hesitant, whispering of them in the night fell on sleeping ears. Did the hasty, penning, scribbling of them manage to miss the kiss of your eyes? Is it possible, that I forgot to say them at our last goodbye?

Yet, however much I hate them, loath them, detest or fear them...

I will continue to use them. That forever they will fall from my lips, unending. Ceaseless, till that day I get to let them escape my mouth for the final time. How I will suffer in silent, endless agony, knowing that they will ever land short of the mark that is painted for them in my heart. A mark that will remain so beautifully empty for the lack of language to ever equate. But I will hope and pray with all the will that I can muster that...

Every time I write them,
Every time I speak them,
Every time I whisper and scream them,
You will yet be able to know...