The Cancer of Words

“Taste your words before you spit them out”

Later that evening, as the moon hid behind a blanket of dark clouds and the rains lashed the window panes beating them mercilessly, I realized that all the words that were doled out in rage earlier today, were radioactive. The ends of the sentences we shot out had hooks and teeth like that on a saw and they cut deep into our beings. They found their way into our skins and sludged the blood. The vile and slanderous insults that were hurled out reeked of the sewage trapped in our souls and the whiffs of air exhaled, during the pauses between those sentences were carcinogenic too.

The venom flowed easy. The papillae of every syllable grated the body and stripped us down to the bone. Each word was more violent than the one uttered before it and ferociously shredded the fragments of our relationship with a crass, rasping breath. The fumes of the fury blurred the vision and caused the eyes to burn. The house was filled with smoke in no time but the fire that caused it bore no light. It just engulfed all that was living and breathing and reduced us to crawling rodents, eager to bite and devour the opponent to win the battle and satiate the hunger that stemmed from the tentacles of our boisterous egos.

When the words were consumed, there was nothing left but an eerie silence broken by a few sobs. The night stood guard and ensured that no one left their graves that night.

Tomorrow I will rake the leaves blown into our living room from the windows and the doors we left ajar for each other. I will also clean out the kitchen and throw away all the shattered pieces of china that couldn’t weather the whirlwind we brewed and unleashed on each other. You can wake up at your convenience. I will take the mirror out as well and move it to the garage for another day. I am sure it will be difficult to see our faces again when we stand next to each other and look at ourselves. For now, I will just move my belongings to another room. Every now and then, I will meet you in the hallway, look you in the eye and scowl and scathe you with my sarcasm, bleeding my heart out on the inside at the same time.

Someday, when we return to this storm, I will remind you of what happened today and the repurcussions of it. The cancer of words is incurable. It will never leave our system now and will slowly force us into a therapy that will fleece and erode us, of whatever that was once beautiful between us. But, I am sure it won’t kill us. We are both too thick skinned for stuff like that.

Once the clouds recede, I will try and find a patch of sunshine to counter the ice set in your eyes. The pale blue winter sky hardly offers any comfort, but definitely gives a person a false hope of an infinite life. However, the lies of this life are no match against the strenth of the final truth and till we encounter it, I will continue to let you take your sword to my chest every now and then and draw out just enough blood to quench the thirst of this colossal, dismal emotion people call love.

I wish you well…till we meet at the battlefront again.