What did Inaniloquent inspire?
adjective; meaning "given to talking inanely,
loquacious,
garrulous"
loquacious,
garrulous"
There was a time when I could lose myself in her words for hours without feeling left behind. Days passed with my being caught in the lilt and cadence of her words; meanings became lost in the harmonies of her voice cradling the consonant-vowel-consonants against her soul.
And I wanted to be there too. I wanted to curl inside where the words found their essence, the tendril linking them back to whatever made her her. There was a distance I could not overcome. I strove to catch her around myself, but the closest I came was the curl of her lips around my name. It wasn't enough. It was a taste. A taste fallen too short for addiction to settle against.
The first year was spent in aching. Searching for more, more, more. I reached out and grasped and clung and… it wasn't what I sought. I stayed in the moment of sounds, without realizing she was offering me meaning. I know these were the best moments we exchanged. In the end, her “meanings” were nothing but inaniloquent panderings to any eyes turned towards her.
The second year was when the world came crashing back. I pulled back the music of her mouth around the consonant-vowel-consonants and - - - emptiness. Her truths leaked out against her chatter. There was no spirit held captive from me the past 12 months. I had spent myself striving to curl around a space where “nothing” would have held more possibilities. This was less. She was more than absence, she was lacking, disembodied embodiment.
When I walked away, she merely turned to the next ears-eyes-nose that sought her out. I was broken. I had curled around the empty music until it collapsed into the empty spaces it had masked. I had become her inane rumblings, her vapid existence. In most ways, I still am.
You
were always so eloquent. I could've happily spent my days sitting at your feet,
listening to you recite your precious rhymes. You were my poet, and I referred
to you as such. (You always claimed I was the better writer. I still have
trouble believing that.)
Compared
to you, I felt inadequate. Inaniloquent. Compared to you, I felt like I had
nothing worthwhile to say. I felt embarrassed, like I couldn't keep up in
conversation. You seemed to have an unlimited knowledge of words; I wouldn't exactly call you a walking dictionary, but
I currently lack a better term to describe you (which is pretty funny in
itself, when you think about it).
You
bitterly complained to me once about a professor's so-called harsh grading of a
paper you wrote. "She said it read like I vomited the contents of a
thesaurus onto a page!" you exclaimed. "She said she didn't even know
some of the words I used!"
"That's
nothing new to me," I
thought to myself. I frequently had to look up words you used in everyday
speech. I was halfway convinced you were schooled by private tutors in archaic
terms; it's a sure bet that some of the words that came out of your mouth
hadn't been uttered by another soul in at least fifty years. At the time, this
was captivating to me. It made you seem so learned, so scholarly, so completely
wonderful.
(Of
course, now I know it was nothing but a crock of shit. You were spitting up
words a thesaurus provided you, without having the slightest clue if you were
using them correctly. You weren't some deep thinker after all. You were an
illusion, a phony. I'm allowed to say all these things, because I'm the one who
caught you in the act.)
It
figures one such uncommon word inspired this remembrance of you. The moment I
had to look it up, your face flashed across my mind. You'd probably enjoy this
exercise. It's a pity you're the one who's inaniloquent.
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