Special Problems in Vocabulary

There is no single particular noun for the way a friendship, stretched over time, grows thin, then one day snaps with a popping sound. No verb for accidentally breaking a thing while trying to get it open —a marriage, for example. No particular phrase for losing a book in the middle of reading it, and therefore never learning the end. There is no expression, in English, at least, for avoiding the sight of your own body in the mirror, for disliking the touch of the afternoon sun, for walking into the flatlands and dust that stretch out before you after your adventures are done. No adjective for gradually speaking less and less, because you have stopped being able to say the one thing that would break your life loose from its grip. Certainly no name that one can imagine for the aspen tree outside the kitchen window, in spade-shaped leaves spinning on their stems, working themselves into a pale-green, vegetable blur. No word for waking up one morning and looking around, because the mysterious spirit that drives all things seems to have returned, and is on your side again.