How come people still don’t look at the sky, wear shabby, bright colours or sing their daily commutes into being, instead opting to ruin their ears?

You are no oracle – and these are not questions. Not really. It’s just my fall nostalgia, when people turn the mystery of the fog into merely smog. C’mon, why else does the word ‘mystery’ begin in mist? Track a dozen languages of the Germanic kind and ignore the damned etymologist – consider what entomologists do to insects and words’ terror to find themselves in those dry books instead of being spoken aloud.

All those beautiful words mispronounced because we only read them and shy away from using them, afraid to be asked to form them again, afraid to be corrected. Initiated. Yes, there is a visceral side to words, where you stumble over them on your way to the door, where you spit them out like little misbirths from your palate. Blood and fire and hot humiliation on putting the stress on the wrong syllable – were words like birds we’d know their plumage. We’d sing their multi-syllabled colours aloud: amaranth, burgundy and – blue like a sweet little plump seedpod between your lips.

Speak or sing or sigh after the jade colours of the sky – but express yourself.

Even a twisty little smile is warm when there’s a maze of flat-eyed stares around.