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--- A M Y   H O L M A N


	“No, I don’t mean boardroom French, I mean the cups and spoons, the leaves.” -- S.A.

What if I must rely on lip readers and I speak languish instead of language? Not the deaf who know the joint-- fingers spelling tired mouths--but the spies who mostly betray and sometimes portray. Or the northern spies, apples of deceit both sweet and tart. Language is an art and common ground, requiring sight and sound, or context. Art is the curfew on commonality, the part of languish that lingers. I want more than to be merely understood, like simply surviving, or only on my own. I’d like to navigate uncertainty in another tongue rather than say what I mean to someone here who isn’t listening. Oh, the luxury of me, untranslated, learning the slang of someone else. Pass the sugar, read the tea. Is future the fortune or present the opening to pass through? I don’t think we change even if we’re changeable--the glass half full one day, half empty the next, but never the water carrying the glass away. One day I like to ride out into the city, the next hide out at home. We are confined by who we are more than what we say, even if the lip readers read language on the day of languish, and tell.

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