Sifting Sound Into Shape

“S” he scrawled silently (tongue in cheek) . “ILE” the pencil pondered ponderously (an awesome feat) . “NT” his head empty (...empty...) “LY” “You’ve got to try! ” (He could only cry) a prism of tears enclosing the word (a microbe microscopically magnified) by his despair. The black markings that he made would not talk back to him. He saw only the silent white that glowed around the lonely letter felt only the emptiness that writing cut out of the page’s snowdrift. He could not claim to know how letters chiselled meaning into words until once (suddenly it seemed) upon a time sifting shape into sense there fell through the mesh of letters nuggets of words golden with meaning. “Gold! ” stuttered his stunted pencil. “Gold! ” his startled hand mimed. “Gold! ” screamed his mind. “Gold! ” “Gold! ” “Gold! ”