Words are ghosts. Once summoned, they do not return to the darkness from which they came. They haunt the chambers of memory, pacing the corridors of the mind long after the speaker has forgotten ever giving them life. The cruelest among them wear pleasant faces. They arrive cloaked in jest, in anger, in passing thought, only to root themselves deep within the soul, where they whisper without ceasing. Time dulls the edge of iron, but not the echo of a sentence spoken without mercy. How curious