This article is the first of several collection pieces we will publish this semester, in which we ask some of our staff writers to each write a short blurb in response to a prompt. This week’s prompt was: Write about your favorite word. We received a wide range of responses, about words that were silly, graceful, violent, sophisticated, imaginary. We invite you to take a stroll through these mini word exhibits, starting with Deeya Prakash’s presentation of “diaphanous,” and seeing where you end up.
Diaphanous
Deeya Prakash
Diaphanous. It sounds like the name of an eternal goddess, her body slim and sleek, eyes drawn closed, skin glowing in the evening air. It sounds like a clear breath at high altitude, open sky and streaming sunlight and “Mom can we please go…” It sounds like the meadow. It sounds like my sister.
Say it. Whisper it. It feels like something you shouldn’t know.
It means delicate, light, the way the wind blows raindrops off the side of our moving minivan, tears streaming down cheeks until you’ve cried so much that all there is is silence, a gaping mouth and a beating heart and no sound but the echo of what once was.
It means sheer. Transparent. Cover it up and we’ll see right through.
It means that you know I can’t stand living at home anymore but I come back to school and cry because there will be a time in my life when our parents are no longer alive.
Diaphanous. -ous. us. You and me. Do you miss when it was just you and me? Jack and Jill bathrooms and sidewalk chalk smiles and pajama pants too short? Let’s go watch the stars together. Nobody braids my hair like you do.
Diaphanous. -phan. phone. I’m sorry I sometimes don’t pick up the phone. Tell me about your day. How was school? How’s dad?
Diaphanous. Di-. Die. Unthinkable. It’s a little scary how diaphanous this life can be. It feels like something you shouldn’t know.
Bleeding
Libby Dakers
Everyone knows the drama of bleeding. Rich red, morbidity, beating hearts. What about the bleeding that means settling into a new position? The bleeding that describes how one thought, one sliver of wind, one bold spot of ink, runs into its next opportunity? Bleeding demonstrates the unity of two becoming one, as my time bleeds into yours, and yours into mine when we walk side by side down the street. Bleeding describes life, though not in the way of warm blood running thinly. An unmistakable feeling; I bleed when you cry.
Bleeding is the word that pulled me closer, urging me to place words where they may not typically go. In my first poems, the wind would not tousle the leaves and the tension in the air would not throw pebbles at my window if the blue sky did not bleed to dusk. Bleeding pushes me through boundaries, like blood pours through open skin. Think beyond the heart, because so much pulses around you.
Ube
Pooja Kalyan
Ube. Not pronounced how you might think at first glance, but rather, “OOH-BAY.”
U, for unexplainably delicious.
B, for beautifully purple.
E, for exquisitely flavorful.
Say it out loud and you’ll experience the wonderful way the word bounces off your lips. Feel your mouth open for the “Ooh,” quickly close for the “Beh,” and open again, but a little less this time, for the “ay.” It’s kinda like bouncing on a trampoline—how the lips quickly bounce together, then apart to say the word.
It’s wonderful.
Almost as wonderful as the taste of the starchy root vegetable itself. I remember the first time I tasted ube. A sweet, nutty flavor blended perfectly into a naturally purple ice cream. My taste buds came alive for a brief moment, as if the ube was begging me to try another spoonful. I couldn’t resist.
I still can’t.
Ube. Picture purple yam. Still sweet like plain sweet potatoes, yet even more moist. Coco-nutty, with a hint of vanilla. Soft and moist when boiled. Creamy and smooth in a scoop of ice cream.
Delicate and light as a pot de crème.
Yes, ube is a word. But it is also an experience:
An experience to say it.
An experience to eat it.
An experience to see its
beautiful purple color.
You won’t resist.
Elusive
Navya Sahay
Elusive. Roll it down your tongue, lingering on the “l” like it’s your true love but playing hard to get—which fits in well with the word’s meaning: a thing that’s there briefly, fleetingly, before escaping to somewhere beyond your reach. It’s ice melting in your hands. A deer you glimpse in a quiet forest that bolts as soon as you try to get a better view of it. A shimmering reflection in a pool of shifting water that vanishes with the slightest change of angle. It’s something that is never fully there, but which makes its presence felt, becoming all the more valuable because of its infrequency. It’s a rarity, a word that exists in abstract realms of hypothetical thought, a word to quantify the unknown that one can’t catch. As a word, it is subtle just like what it describes—it is sleek, sophisticated, and mysterious. It isn’t like those chunky, obvious words like happy, delicious, magnificent, horrible, or splendid. It calls to mind clouds or mists in the moors that one can never quite touch or dreams one can never fully remember. It’s an introspective word, something that makes you stop and think, “Wait a minute, what is in there?” A secret that no one knows but everyone longs to find out.
BEEBAHBOO
Riley Stevenson
My favorite word is not exactly a word. Rather, it is a nonsense collection of sounds, which came to me straight from the mouth and mind of a six-year-old. It’s not a word but a memory, really, forever ingrained in my mind.
It was the second-to-last day of summer camp. I was on the water with two six-year-old boys, facilitating their now-typical routine of jump, splash, climb. Floating in the water, I waited as the boys launched off the dock and into my arms, then flung them back toward the dock, where my co-counselor sat, helping them in and out of the water. Time and time again we repeated this routine, all splashing and giggles and bright sunlight reflected in flying water droplets.
In one of these cycles, B, on his way into the water, gazed at me with a wide-eyed, big smile, and said, in his little-kid manner of never-ending monologue: “I can’t wait to be alive!” I instantly cataloged this, recognizing the way it so perfectly described his ethos: Each moment was more exciting than the last, each instant one to be savored before galloping onto the next, even more breathtaking second. Moments later, he shouted, of all things, “BEEBAHBOOOOO!”
A series of nonsense sounds, exclaimed into a glorious summer day, all yellow and green and blue, warmth and noise and sunshine. He could have said anything at that moment, but when he said it, these two ideas––B’s zest for life, and the phrase itself––were instantly and eternally linked in my mind.
In that moment I thought, unexpectedly, of every second I’ve ever spent on a trail, all of the miles I’ve walked on my own two feet, the trees I’ve seen, the mountains I’ve climbed. I felt a moment of intense, blinding gratitude—I can pull myself up hard trails and howl at the sunrise from rocky outcroppings, and I get to be here, present in this moment of slinging a child onto a paddleboard while he shrieks with delight.
Now, when I am on mountain summits, approaching tumbling rapids, at the top of ski runs, and skating on frozen ponds, it is my favorite thing to scream, to remind me that I am alive and lucky: “Beebahboo.” This is it. I think of B each time, of how well he knew that nothing has ever mattered more than this single moment, and the next one, too. I think often of those two blue, waterlogged eyes staring straight at me, and my two feet strong beneath me as I stand atop the world. Beebahboo. I can’t wait to be alive.
Sole Magazine