I come to as if away from certain nausea.
As a child I went through echolalia,
an ordinary stage of growing up,
a temporary mental disorder
when my brain put in the clutch
and cruised a moment through its growth.
Words repeated somnolently after people
said them to each other,
repeated deliciously inside the numb
cocoon stuffed with cotton
disintegrating continually into two people
talking to each other on the sidewalk.
Echolalia is a feeling
but not a feeling
in the same way that
word is a word for word.
Echolalia has a tinge of eroticism
and yet has nothing to do
with anything bodily at all.
I come to
through remembrance of echolalia