A Word Problem

by Shayne Holzman

A word wrapped around a sentence is asking me a question: “In what way do you interpret me?” The sentence begins to inquire how the word is to be depicted.

But this word isn’t ordinary. The word is readable in full meaning and spelling but is perceived in an incoherent way. The word is locked in and can’t be visualized in the words created by the sentence.

A letter is blocked, causing half of the comprehension to taper off. When the word is seen, a kinesthetic and woozy feeling hunches over the sentence. The flow of the word becomes demoralized, and the interpretation of the sentence is in turmoil.

When I read the word, a part of me loses control of my brain. There is a mechanism consisting of facts and tracings of incomprehensible realizations. There are no epiphanies in this book, and there shall never be any until a story comes along with a twisted cacophony.

As I read, I am disturbed while searching for the answer to a knowledge-level question.

“There must be another way to explain it,” the word says.

“What do you mean?” I ask, with too many cluttered thoughts.

“You know the answer. You’re just afraid to say it,” the word replies.

“But how can I know the answer when my brain depletes the mechanism of not believing the word is truly spelled correctly and when my mind is nearly blank and incoherently lost in the world of an explicit non-transient book?”

Now that’s a question to be answered unquestionably, and to be thought out in a new demeanor.

“Okay,” the word says, “you’ve just told me your brain is in such disarray that you can’t interpret what has been unheard of before?”

“Oh well,” I reply, “I have an answer in the back of my brain, which you are implying I should portray. But I am aghast at the implications. Now you’re really screwing me up.”

“You’re a professional screw-up in your own understanding of literature,” the sentence says, “and in reasoning behind nostalgic logic.”

“You don’t make sense, and I don’t get it. And yet, come to think of it, I really do. Your words just lock into my brain and intertwine my interpretation of a word in a different way.”

Now I know the answer: some things don’t make sense.

I am one of them.