Love Languages
Original Illustration by Yevgenia Nayberg
Competition: The Rhyming Story Challenge 2022, Final Round
Genre: Open
Theme: Cross-country
Emotion: Bashful
400 words
The illness was sneaky – we laughed at it first,
‘Cause everyone has a bad day.
We all forget phrases and get things reversed
And don’t always know what to say.
But as the infected continued to slow,
Their reading and writing decayed,
Journalists gathered, demanding to know
What caused the decline they displayed.
And when they flew home, much bewildered, to write
The words came out backward and breached.
And newscasters froze as the words that were right
Were hovering just out of reach.
Some had been fine for a week or a day.
In time, though, each one was beset.
“Encephalopathic aphasia,” they say:
A new, irreversible threat.
It took only weeks for the virus to spread
To the edge of the country and more
Emergency warnings went out just ahead
Of the government moving offshore.
I knew in my gut something like this was due,
And though I was left in arrears
With canning and storing up I had accrued
Enough rations for us for five years.
But gifting a bunker is not a romance,
Or so I had gathered because
My wife shed a tear and before I’d a chance
To wipe it away she was gone.
The bunker’s now silent and eerily blank,
With rust as a chilling veneer.
But suddenly, knocking! I leap at the crank,
Confirming it’s truly them here!
“You don’t have to take me,” she said with a wince,
“But will you take Olive inside?”
We both knew our daughter’d already rushed in.
I smiled and stepping aside.
She flushed, but she entered, and in her blue eyes
Was grateful, and hope, and the rest of our lives.
We shared loving smiles as Ol pushed my dress,
Her tiny hands asking me staying.
I down on the ground and I nod mhm yes
And sign to her this is new home.
But I didn’t realizing long since I speak.
My hands had all fumbling signs.
My heart went loud crack when Olive eep squeak.
Then sudden a hand hugging mine.
Then blue. Wife eyes, blue, it was all I –was eyes
And arms. Heavy arms hugging back.
Then into ear, words of sorry. Of love.
As she worded the words that I lacked.
Those blue eyes were light-light and love-love and deep
They now seeing bunker love-say.
The blue eyes like water with waterfall weep.
I hand up and
Make water away.
To learn more about aphasia, or to find support for yourself or a loved one, please visit the National Aphasia Association (NAA) at www.aphasia.org.
About the Author
By day, Brianna Chamberlain is a nonprofit grant writer in Maryland, USA. By night, she can be found in her craft room with a giant mug of licorice tea, exploring creative and meaningful uses for a variety of art and writing techniques (while trying to keep her neurotic dog from licking off the resin she just spilled down her pajama pant leg). Learn more about her antics at BriannaChamberlain.com.
