word heist

Everyday I breathe and I eat, I blink and blink

and heart my keeps time or perhaps just reminds me that I’m alive

But most of all I steal words

An unknown thief

a covert operation of constant magnitude

I collect them from pressed between fading pages of bound hard books

I grab them from above your head while you chatter to your girlfriend

I scrape them off the floor and rub them between my fingertips until they

shine and glimmer

Until I have Truncated from a girl with orange fingernails

And Collusion from the newspaper as I threw away my napkin

Manifesto, Adjustable, Nostalgia and Velvet I heisted

And when my stolen words are polished, when they gleam, I spend them

And because they gleam nobody discerns that they weren’t mine

Not a soul examines them closely

Until they are mine, my ravishing words

And when I have enough

I recite the story of pirated consonant and vowels

And you don’t even distinguish

that you are buying back your own words!