Metaphors are the calming chocolate hazelnut spread that makes a story delicious, especially when spread in copious amounts on a piece of toast. A story without well crafted metaphors is unreadable, making it into either a bland piece of matzo or a mixed spread of peanut butter and mayonnaise.

Metaphors, faltering but competent old professors, can easily make the longest, most elaborate descriptions of characters or places into a “fun-sized” candy bar of imagination. Ever read Ray Bradbury, modernity’s knight of literary prowess? His words are sounds and feelings: chills and warmth, darkness and light. The same is true of every great author, a rule: Charles Dickens, Kurt Vonnegut, William Shakespeare. Almost every normal author in contrast, without the aid of metaphors’ heroic artistry, coughs and sputters, chokes and tumbles over myriads of words.

They are not similes — their unconfident brothers who need to clarify their figurative natures — metaphors are strong but sleek and slender wild horses.

Even better are the children of metaphors: catachresis in its varied forms. Catachresis is the eventual extension of the metaphor: the wire to its fishing pole. This wire skips off in catachresis and it dances as it trips against the water.

At this point, this story is way too self-referencing and metacognitive to even exist. Thus it bids you farewell.