In Tongues

He tried, but failed.

Almost all language had fallen away from him; falling away overnight, leaving him to make his way through the increasingly unfamiliar landscape with only limited and dwindling expressive resources.

Worse yet, though he could not immediately determine the extent, he noted with growing panic a similar falling away of his ability to comprehend both spoken and written communication.

The prospect of final and utter bereavement from what had always, up until even that very morning, provided him with measureless pleasure now completely overwhelmed and terrified him.

Not knowing whether the transformation would be finally realized over the course of moments or of years, each utterance, each sentence on the page took on the precious quality of air itself.

The fear of suffocation drowned him.

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Yet, instead of making the most of every opportunity to use either spoken or written language (as one might expect he…