"A word of warning, two words of caution, half a word of love." I glanced at the recipe. It had taken me half an year to collect the ingredients. The caution alone needed five weeks to mature. I still felt bad sawing the seeds in my best friend. We had been through a lot together, even if he was as normal as they come.

I placed the words of caution into the vial. They swirled around, leaving a trail of light blue smoke. Then I added the word of warning. Instantly the cautions moved away, as if afraid of the warning's glowing red. The started circling it at equal distances at each other, like a pair of kittens walking around a cucumber—curious about it, yet far to scared to approach. I smiled. It was always amusing to watch words interact. The first time it happened, I had been mesmerized for hours. 

[i]Back to work,[/i] I urged myself. Time was growing short, and I had barely begun with my preparations. 

"Two words of advice, a pinch-full of adventure," I went on, inadvertently cringing at the latter. Why couldn't people use proper measurements? It had taken me an year to figure out the exact quality of a "pinch" and even then it was mostly a matter of interpretation. A lot of the old recipes still used this absurd and obsolete measuring system. I preferred clarity. 

The advice plopped into the vial, letting off a series of golden bubbles. In pure form, they were inert, not reaction with anything else. That's what the love was for, although I was going to add that at the very end. Love was weird like that—it dissolved quickly, avoiding almost every other word. It was also extremely tricky to get right. Add too much and it would overpower any other sensations, add too little and it would shy away like a scared child, leaving no affect whatsoever.

"Three fourths of melancholy..." Originally the reception called for half, but I liked adding a bit more. It added a certain softness, or so I found. Not that anyone would admit, my girlfriend included. She would always complain about melancholy, yet only when she knew it was present. On a second anniversary I had secretly added a quarter word of melancholy and she had loved it, not suspecting one bit that the so dreaded ingredient had "contaminated her senses."

"Three words of mystery, one word of expectation..." expectation had been another tricky one to get. It used to be much more common, now I could only find it on Fridays. Thank heavens that my neighbour—a nice middle aged school teacher—still had hopes for his students. Each time there was a test, expectations were oozing out of him, in the hopes that someone had actually paid attention during his classes. I had to pick them quickly, though, for those expectations began shriveling away during during grading.

One by one, I kept adding the ingredients. Words of various shapes and colours moved around the vial. Some would stick to one another, while others would try to move away, almost sticking to the glass walls. 

"A single word of sorrow..." I quickened the pace. "Four words of acceptance, one word of mischief, and one word of forgiveness." I liked to mix sorrow and forgiveness; they added a specific bittersweet aroma to things, after several attempts I had finally found the right proportion. Of course, my mentor would grumble at me for using whole world. In his view I was being sloppy and slothful, using one word when I should have zero-point-seven. He was right, of course—whole words rarely won contests, but for homemade i still felt they were the better choice.

I added the half word of love to the mixture, then quickly stirred. A bouquet of colours exploded, bubbling out of the vial in scary speed. In a few seconds they would be gone, reduced to a grey stale substance. Until then, however, they were most beautiful thing in the world. 

With a stern hand I poured the mixture on a piece of paper. Technically it was supposed to be parchment, but those were expensive, so I saved them only for contests and special occasions. Besides, this was a casual get together. 

"Jenny," I called out from the kitchen, as letters—still steaming with colour—moved together forming words. "The sonnet's ready. Come before it gets cold." 

I smiled, admiring my creation. Nothing could beat a good homemade sonnet.