I Am the Word Snatcher’s Daughter by Rachel Newcombe

    ​ Jenna Post CC


​I Am the Word Snatcher’s Daughter

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I guard my alphabet from the word snatcher.  He is insatiable.

The snatcher abuses his family with a hunger blind to the damage it causes. Assaults leave wounds, visible and invisible.

Alone, the snatcher chokes on his own lexicon, he doesn’t know how to feed himself. The snatcher’s wife is damaged too. She denies her appetites, hunger buried deep, defeat her main course.

The snatcher’s family is lonely. Appetites run rampant. One of the snatcher’s sons consumes heroin. The other son of the snatcher consumes so much rage his body enlarges twice its size.

The snatcher’s daughter has a hunger for books. She first whets her appetite on The Poky Little Puppy, then Harriet the Spy and Trixie Belden and when she is older, Waiting for Godot and The Price of Salt.
 
In her teens the snatcher’s daughter discovers libraries taste delicious and autobiographies are scrumptious.  As an adult the snatcher’s daughter encounters Carole Maso and Maggie Nelson, a taste of rare delicacies.
 
Finally, the snatcher’s daughter  learns some books have the taste of freedom.

Rachel Newcombe is a psychoanalyst in the San Juan Islands and Seattle, Washington. Her writing has appeared in Contemporary Psychoanalysis, The Psychoanalytic Review,Fort/Da, The Rumpus, 7X7LA, Anti-Heroin Chic, Hippocampus, and elsewhere. She can be found on Twitter at @rachelnewcombe8 

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