Lines of Communication

It starts well.

It fizzles along the tubes, leaps over the synapse-chasms, snaps into the consciousness and lurks on the tip of my tongue...

I open my mouth to speak.

And the fog descends.

I babble.

It was once so clear but now it is murky. Something has, with lumpen feet, stomped through the middle of the crystalline pool and churned it into mud.

I stammer.

My head hurts. The words are hanging, suspended in my brain, out of order, out of synch, jangling against one another. With sharp edges.

I stutter.

My tongue is a shovel, my words are a pit and I am digging deeper and deeper. And it is not what I mean. I talk myself around in a circle until I spin dizzily back into the hole. How can I expect you to understand what I have so dismally failed to explain?

I give up.

The fog clears and the pain dissipates.

Cuppatea?