Metaphor and Simile
I wake up every day with a burning sensation in my throat, a neck that hurts to move, and an insatiable thirst (of both the physical and terrible metaphor varieties).
Physically, I would like water.
I keep a glass on the printer next to my bed, but it’s never quite enough, and I always have the feeling that a slightly larger glass would suffice, but I’m scared of breaking from routine.
Metaphorically (and I apologize for forcing you, my dear reader, into enduring yet another “insatiable thirst” metaphor, but I thought it was funny at the moment, so bear with me), I would like…
…actually, I would just like to know what it is I would like.
That yearning (a word chosen here for its close auditory proximity to “burning”) is for something I can’t readily identify. I don’t know what I want, and that’s why things hurt as much has they do.
This pain is also metaphorical, though occasionally it manifests itself as physical pain in the form of a stabbing sensation in my stomach or flank, or an immense pressure near my sternum.
What hurts is not knowing.
I’m sure I could write a list of things I want but do not need, and it couldn’t be bound and published, not because it wouldn’t be an enticing read (I can assure you, it would be absolutely phenomenal), but because it would weigh significantly more than even the longest of literary classics, and the shipping charges would be exorbitant.
However, I find myself incapable of writing what amounts to the exact opposite of that list: a one bullet-point document of things that I actually need.
I know what I want, and it’s to know what I need.
Maybe I do know, and maybe I’m trying to convince myself that what I know is right is actually wrong, entirely because I know that what I need seems to be so desperately out of reach, like a magnet being forced to its same-pole brethren, getting close through effort, but alas, never connecting.
Or maybe I just like making excuses for myself with shitty similes.
I’m a writer and a liar, so it’s probably the latter.
