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Linguistinguishable
I signify without the signified.
I am a mangled portmanteau of five words,
incomprehensible upon creation.
I am perceived as nonsense syllables,
an onomatopoeia of white noise
across the page, although the readers know
my origins (the long-forgotten words
that merged to form my flesh) had meanings,
in fact had widely disparate meanings,
and yet I can’t remember them at all.
I signify without the signified.
I am a transitive verb with no object,
or more specifically, I am “to do,”
a verb amorphously floating on
a paper pool without context or syntax
to help define myself. Not setting fires,
not sitting on my knees, not fixing lunch,
not recording videos of dogs in heat,
not reading nor writing, I’m just “to do.”
I only say that someone does something,
but I don’t know which someone, which something.
I signify without the signified.
I envy people used in metaphors.
I roll my eyes at those who think themselves
dehumanized when they’re compared to rugs,
acanthus leaves, or apple juice boxes.
Provided I’m accepted as myself,
I’d love to be a word in flesh, companion
to another image, just as powerful
as “the smell of stovetop eggs,” the page’s phrase
that makes me think of prefaces to breakfast.
Likewise, perhaps the dryness of my hands
could signify “a little garden’s drought.”