The history of language is the history of money.I heard that in a movie where a gun goes offto punctuate the silence. I think about thatsometimes. Not the words, the silence.How it dilates and slows. Sharpening whatfollows. Muzzle, barrel, trigger. The standoffbetween index and firing pin. Equal parts funnyand heartbreaking, these dull litanies. I think aboutthat too, how I sculpt the emptiness with talk,folding vowels into the mouth of certainty.Rondure, ungulate, sard. Words soelegant in their knowing. Their vacuitylike a long, gilded flower, broken at the stalk.Strange how opposites dovetail, certitude with doubt,falsity with truth. One always sheltering the other,compensating. Etymology means the study oftruth the same way ciao elegizes a wordpeople died to forget. Trace an edgelong enough and out whispers the slurreddusk. Coins rub smooth, and yet it wasn’t lovehe gave me. It was mercy. This lagniappe, anotherchance at life. In Quechua, yapay means to add,to augment. As in yapasaq, used in the bookof Matthew to denote the act of giving.In that parable, the word winnowsacross an indiscriminate earth, livingonly in fertile silence. When I wanted, I tookwhat I wanted. Indiscriminately. I thought I hadnothing to offer. That addition was the act of takingwithout apology. There was no movie. He leveledhis pistol at my face and smiled. It was a jokethat took years to open into a laugh, howa wayward seed will languish under the chokeof thorns. Long before I learned to give, I reveledin pain. Its drama. Each word a gesture of its making.When he drew on me, nothing changed. I didn’t clearthe cobwebs from my hands. I didn’t learnhow to listen. Or how to forgive.I only knew this silenceas an echo I didn’t want to relive.A stillness, a gift. This word I whet and turn,lagniappe. Lagniappe. He who has ears, let him hear.