Words of different colors, shapes, sizes, tastes and sounds tumbled from his mouth, falling onto the table and spilling over onto the floor where they skittered about, disappearing under rugs, under doors, swirling about the room, in the air, into and out of cabinets and drawers. They were everywhere, out of control, unmanageable.

He was dreaming!

Here he was a writer and words were dancing about so quickly, so frenetically, he could not make sense of them. Had he ever made sense of them? Really? Or were those just moments of luck when a sentence that escaped his pen held its shape?

As an increasing number of words poured out of him and scurried about, they now began to make an inexplicable unpleasant noise, a cacophony of clatter, crunching sounds like knuckles cracking, skidding, spinning, tapping, a beating out of rapid disjointed impossible to follow rhythms. Yet he knew they were pleading with him. With him! What could they possibly want? They are all, he knew, each of them, living beings, so they could not possibly be pleading for some kind of meaning. Like all living things they, above all perhaps, were born with meaning. They would live forever with their meanings. So what then? What was it they were pleading for? There was a yearning, he felt it.

He awoke sweating.

The sheets and pillow cases were soaked. He got out of bed, walked into the kitchen, turned on the tap, poured himself a glass of cold water, and drank it. He changed the sheets and pillow cases and showered. He drank another glass of cold water from the tap, peed, went back to bed, and fell asleep.

This times the words poured from his mouth, eyes, ears, nose, they flew from the palms of his hands, his arms outstretched, somehow he knew they needed to be outstretched. Why? Was this some kind of crucifixion?

The words again produced a cacophony of wild indecipherable noise and again he heard pleading and, more evident now than before yearning.

He wanted to shout out to them but his mouth would not work. He wanted to shout, “But you’re words! You have meaning! Why can’t you tell me what you want?” But try as he might, he could not speak.

It was then he saw the little boy looking up at him. The boy had dark hair, deep chocolate eyes. And although the little boy’s mouth did not move, the little boy spoke to him. The little boy smiled and said, “They want what I want, what everyone wants, what every living thing wants.”

The writer woke up and said, “Purpose.”

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