ViolentFumes

some people (the lucky ones) get songs stuck in their heads. i, on the other hand, am left with words that beat incessantly against the confines of my brain. last week, it was "gossamer." i thought it was whimsical; that was pleasant. i saw the word every which way i turned:        a gossamer veil of sunlight,        a silk shirt like gossamer,        a spider hanging by a thread of it. i hate the word now, with all its whimsy washed away; the hard g is too harsh and garish against the roof of my mouth, the double s too serpentine. it feels numbingly stiff on my tongue, like some sort of linguistic anomaly, a could-be word that really s