Ritual.

She grinned like she had the pleasure of a secret. Lovely to see you. He pecked her lightly on the cheek and felt the suede warmth of her flesh. Closing his eyes and pressing his lips a little firmer, surprised with the elevating pleasure of the exchange, he inhaled and was mildly perturbed to discover the scent she wore – or had worn today – was the same fragrance his daughter favoured. But she must be three times her age? He kissed her face harder still, confused, put off his stride. His lips widened just enough for his tongue to emerge and faintly taste skin and perfume mingling with a mysterious womanly concoction of powders and creams. She stiffened; her grin waned. He looked away and mumbled a weak apology, his mouth dry with embarrassment. The moment had become horribly awkward, as social rituals do if you repeat them often enough. 

Light.

I've emerged from Plato's cave to view truth in light and shadow and reflection. My mind has been coaxed and trained from obscurity, like an eye illuminated with the brightness of reality. I seek warped watery images; impressions of forms too dazzling, too profound, to examine in ordinary light.

Mispoken.

When the first human spoke the first word how did the speaker know what he or she meant, and how did the listener understand how to interpret the utterance? Answers on the back of a holographic postcard to: 
"WTF are you saying?" Apt 13, 10010110 State Highway 1, Auckland. 
Attn: Anonymous Author.

Earnest.

In life, not everything is relevant; in literature, this is not so. His creative paralysis stemmed from the pressure to emulate prior barely comprehensible eruptions of earnestness. Deliberate obfuscation intensified despite his unnerving emotional clarity.

Lazy.

If I was as lazy with my writing as you are with your speech idt b dixwlt s udersnda w((woz drtyinf to?say doo uou/.

Difficult.

He was difficult to be around but I enjoyed spending time with him. It meant I was not the most offensive person in the room.

Actinic word sequence.

Phantoms.

In belief of certain types the will must be passive and the intellect suspended, a realm of phantoms entered. Some regard wishful thinking as a valid scientific method until there is evidence to suggest contrary.

Made.

I'm going to let them know all about it. That I know what they get up to. They do this sort of thing now, I said. And I shouldn't have said it. It's none of my or her business what they do and I'm one to talk anyway. From behind the windows darkness creeps across the lawn and into my eyes. All I want is my bed. The earth is turning faster than it should, while an insistent ringing grows louder. Can you hear it? No, she said. It hurts, I said. It looks like it, she said. I collapsed and vomited onto the threadbare carpet, grazing my cheek. That felt good. Warm and painful. I remember being punched really hard in the stomach as a child and how good it felt once the pain became hot, after the initial cold slicing of dullness through flesh. So heavy and numbing you're not sure if you will even survive it. Looking up at her I started to cry and rolled onto my back choking tears and thick liquid into the air. Look at me. I screamed. Look at what they've made me. Not them, she said. You. Look what you've made yourself.

Ice.

I knew a popular boy who in adulthood was sentenced to a life of loneliness. People who had liked him concluded that pagophagia was really the only thing that made him cool. Like the successful treatment of an obscure disease, he was miraculously cured of his friends.

Saturday.

He whipped the curtains apart. This is what daytime looks like, he shouted as he kicked the pile of my clothes on the floor. But you'd have forgotten, it's been so long. He stormed out and I heard him slam the front door, his heavy steps across the driveway crunching the gravel. Then the car door slammed and the motor started roughly. As the engine revved out of earshot down the street I rolled over and pulled the covers over my head and farted.

Asemic continuum.

Walk.

Nellie was melancholy about how often during her life she had been on long solitary walks such as this.

Autological.

She feels the contours of the word with her tongue, tracing its outline. It is smooth, oval like a river stone and tastes poisonous. The sensation fills her mouth and slides down her throat into the cavity where she creates feelings of love and hate and fear. She trembles like a bee with wet wings drawn towards absence and evolves the courage to say the word out loud. "Hippopotomonstrosesquipedalian," she announces.

Verb.

"You have very linguistic fingers," she aspirated, and embedded her clause into my dangling preposition. "Let's put the past participle behind us and get to the root of the word. I like to be tongue-tied... it's morpheme when bound. Subject me to your particle and treat me like an object. Ooh! How about a double entendre while we're in the mood?" she queried with a delightfully french accent. "After all, I'm singular, I agree with your gender, it's not just some phrase I'm going through... and let's conjugate!"

"Puck you're punny," I alliterated plosively. "Let's have syntax!"

Venn diagram.

Nameless.

The reasons for doing so were nameless and beyond definition but we did it anyway. Enthusiastically.

Scared.

I'm scared that if you read something enough times the words are stripped of all their meaning.

Pseudohaiku for you.

I can't recall;
possibly my
hippocampus slumbers too deeply

Actinic word sequence.