Dear Dictionary, I have a few words

Some words are funny just by being themselves.
Goofy, for instance — it’s perfect.
It sounds like its own punchline.
Moose makes me imagine a long “Mooooooo” with legs.
Ladybug? A tiny insect carrying a purse.
And choir… well, choir is a betrayal.
You think it’s choice. Then it ambushes you with an R.
As a non-native English speaker, I’ve had to learn that words don’t always look like they sound.
Or sound like they mean.
Or mean what they were supposed to.
They’re moody little creatures. Just like us.

But then come the beautiful ones:
Love.
Tree.
Beauty.
Each soft, like a whisper you want to hear again.

And then there’s “braistorm.”
Not a typo. Just chaos disguised as brilliance.
It’s what happens in my head when too many words come at once —
or not at all.

Because sometimes,
words run away.

And I’m left with sounds.
Hahahs and ughs and hmmms.
I once had someone say they didn’t know what I was talking about —
but they understood me anyway.
That’s how I speak sometimes.
With noise. With eyebrows. With flying gestures.

But when I write?
Silence.
Care.
Devotion.

Written words are sacred.
They deserve the pause. The page turn. The deeper dive.
My silence is not emptiness —
It’s just the sound of me flipping through my dictionary.

Because that’s where I find what I’m really trying to say.
Even when I don’t yet know how.

And what about children?
Their mistakes are not mistakes — they are translations.
A child who misuses a word is just showing you how their mind is stitching the world together.
Don’t rush to fix.
Guide. Gently. Contextually.
They’ll get there.
The words will settle into place like puzzle pieces that finally make sense.

And still, even grown,
we misuse.

We misunderstood black.
We gave it fear, shadow, insult.
When it was always richness. History. Identity.
A whole people wrapped in a word
we didn’t bother to understand.

We owe it more than a correction.
We owe it reverence.

If I could write a love letter to a word?
It would be to peace.
To nature.
To Torben.

Some words are places.
Some are prayers.
Some are people.

And some —
we don’t say out loud,
because they live better whispered
in the space between meaning and feeling.