APHASIA| aphasia

If I lose you

Who am I?

Do I create as I speak

Or do I describe

After the fact?

Always posthumous

Always behind

Always running to catch up?

Enmeshed, dependent, nonexistent.

If I can’t say what I think

Then have I thought it at all?

Would there be a self

An identity

A personhood

Without the simple vertical stroke

Of the letter ‘I’?

Would we have a sense of community

Of belonging

Of togetherness

If language hadn’t put together W and E

To make it bigger than the sum of its parts?

Bigger than you, bigger than me

I is We

Even without telepathic connections

Or genetic mutations

That enable radical empathy.