We begin talking when left alone.

We talk about the burden of talking & about how our talking is different from other talking.

Other talking is mere talking. Our talking is an experience. Our talking is Whiteheadian in method. Our talking is free jazz. Our talking consumes its own metaphors. What has their talking ever done? Now that I think of it what has your talking ever done? So I should say my talking is different from other talking. My talking consumes its own metaphors.

But secretly my talking is middlebrow & so recycles. My talking, I admit, is mostly self-help. My talking is your high school English teacher, a metaphor I resemble & have failed to consume. My talking fails to consume its metaphors & is not very different from your talking after all.

Not very different, but different nevertheless. Six-percent different? One out of every, say, seventeen utterances (give or take) is more politically committed or more poetically challenging or more rhetorically charged. One out of every seventeen isn't so bad.

Others, with a higher percentage, are the poets and writers and bloggers and emailers and letter writers to the editor whom I admire. I want to become them. I want to grow my percentage of difference. I want my annual rate of growth in different talking to exceed any increase in my overall appetite for talking.

I want new words for you. Words to give you. New ways of putting them together to say new things. New talking for you. (Do you hear the you narrowing?) & I want new ways of talking with you. New ways of words being between us. I want our talking to be different from other talking. I confess, your talking has done great things. Your talking made me forsake all other talking. There is no talking other than your talking which has to do with your words sure but then there's your voice too. A voice & a body go hand-in-hand, an unconsumed metaphor. Your voice & body go hand-in-hand while I'm over here just talking. Just talking & losing the sense of your talking. Your voice as a voice being heard but not talking. Your voice then a body outside your body but that is inside my body. That's were your voice goes eventually. So where does the talking go. The talking stays inbetween.

At the beginning I imagined that I was talking. I imagined talking while left alone with you but then I started writing instead -- writing while imagining talking. & then I imagined the talking itself but I was writing all the while not talking. I thought I was talking but I was writing. & then I finally imagined you. & at this point I realized I was writing not talking & I stopped hearing voice. Before I realized I was writing not talking, I heard voices. Voices that were talking & that became writing. Then I realized I was writing & I was alone with the idea of you but you were gone & I was writing about the idea of talking but the talking was gone. Now I'm left with all this writing.