When You Ignore Them (a writing exercise)

When you ignore them, words will come begging; participles dangling, clauses tucked in velvet pauses.

When you ignore them, words will perch on your shoulder, singing songs of black sand beaches and diamond blue skies.

When you ignore them, words will drop onto your head, chucking paragraphs like pinecones to drive you away to paper and pen.

When you ignore them, words coil and hiss in the dust of unwritten pages.

When you ignore them, words will flash their headlights just before they barrel through the intersection, knocking you out of the crosswalk, leaving you bleeding under the streetlight.