The Secret Word That No One Knows

Day 3 of Write Yourself Alive

For Day 3 of Write Yourself Alive, we were to invent a new word and define it. Having studied Latin, Ancient Greek, and Old Norse in college, and also having been somewhat of a Tolkien nerd at one point or another in my life, I’ve done my fair share of inventing words and using them regularly in conversation.

So instead of just throwing another word haphazardly together (the best invented words are those that come naturally… like those that Snoop Dogg and Fergie have added to our vocabularies over the years), I decided to take a slightly different approach. Here is “The Secret Word That No One Knows”:

There are one million, twenty five thousand,
one hundred and nine words in the
English language. I’ve searched them all,
traced every one back to their roots.
French, Latin, German, and Saxon.
I swear I’ve tired my eyes in endless
volumes of dusty old texts trying to
find that one single word to say,
trying to find the right string of
syllables and sounds that define
what you are to me, that describe
how I feel when you walk into a
room and all else melts away.
And I swear to you the right word
never came so I made it my mission
to construct a secret language with
only one word — the most beautiful
word that ever existed — so beautiful
that if spoken you’d fall into a trance
you could never break but only with
a kiss from the one whose lips it
was spoken. What a world it would
be if we both let that word fall
from our lips at precisely the same
moment, with eyes locked and arms
wrapped tight around each other.
For once and for always the world
would finally melt away, and only
we would exist, endlessly paralyzed
by the beauty of that word, forever
frozen by our love for each other,
our lips yearning for the others’ for
eternity, only inches from release
yet trapped in that passionate moment
we lost so long ago…