The Gap

The stranger's mouth made a sound

I don't have letters for.

It was something between two words

in a language I don't speak,

something that fit in the space

where meaning gets swallowed.

At the bus stop, I heard it.

Just heard it. Didn't ask.

Didn't have the right mouth shape to repeat it.

Didn't have the courage to say,

wait, what was that?

Now it's gone.

It's in a language

and I'm outside that language,

pressing my American mouth

against the shape it must have been,

and the shape keeps slipping.

I could look it up. There's no word

in English for it, probably.

That's the point of it, the whole

architecture of that sound—

to live only where

it belongs, to refuse

translation, to stay

inaccessible to people like me

who want to swallow

everything they hear.

I'll never know what I missed.

The bus came. The stranger left.

I stood there with my small,

ordinary mouth,

and the word dissolved

like it never happened.