The Day Words Failed

I don't remember where I was the day that words failed me...
What I was doing when lips and tongue fell still--
Somehow it got past me,
A moment almost beneath notice.
One day I was 15, with spiked hair and black eyeliner,
Scribbling poems in the margins of notebooks to the droning
Of teachers and bureaucrats,
Clinging to words as though somehow they could save me, Make me whole,
Set me free.
Then I was 28, deep in the throes of Saturn Return,
Living in an 80s vintage Peugeot--
An existence fed on love an poetry...
Believing in the magic of words
The angels of an impending apocalypse.
And then, somewhere on the road, I dropped my words on the floor,
Fell silent
And walked away
Now
Teetering on the edge of 40,
I'm remembering what it was to believe in magic,
To crave freedom,
To adventure with language tripping across lips and tongue.
I'm reaching, once more
For the words to make it real.