After You Say It

A word once out, dances where it will.
But what happens when it dances back to you?

We speak and think little of it. Yet a word, once let loose, may travel farther than the tongue that set it free. It may slip through the cracks of memory, change hands in the telling, and gather meanings of its own. By the time it finds its way home, it may no longer answer to the name you gave it.

After all, the tongue has no rewind, and the spoken word has no homecoming unchanged.

AFTER YOU SAY IT.