Collector
They say there is nothing in the abyss, but I am here.
Sometimes the people above throw me things. Old shoelaces and broken toasters and words--words, if I am lucky.
There is not a lot of luck inside of abysses.
Today I collected the word lonely. It came from a little girl who sat at the edge and kicked her feet and cried. Her tears burned me, but I saved them in a bent aluminum can. I named each as it fell, but in their lonely, they all mixed together and refuse to part.
Lonely. I cannot form it the same way she did, but I pronounce it as best I can with my heavy tongue and wide teeth. Lonely. Ls get lost when you speak them down here. I think they miss the sunshine and go running away to find it. Somewhere down here there is a graveyard of them, but their bodies wither so drastically I have not been able to find it. Whenever something crinkles beneath my feet, I think of the fallen Ls.
Lonely.
It means something, and it means nothing. It means me. I am lonely, so terribly lonely down here. It means nothing, because language was invented to communicate, and there is no one down here to communicate to. Still, I say it.
“I am lonely.” I say to my pile of broken toasters, to my aluminum can of tears, to the chain of shoelaces I have knotted together. It is almost long enough to reach the top of the abyss. I have tied a toaster to the very end, and every day I practice swinging it in circles and throwing it upwards. I miss the sunshine, too. I miss it so dearly.
“I am lonely.” I whisper. I wonder if the little girl will bring me another shoelace tomorrow. Or perhaps the next day. I will tell her, then, that she does not need to cry. That I am lonely too.
For now, I wander through the darkness and I decorate it with my new word, over and over and over.
Lonely.