Secret Tongues
July 3 2025
Only when you learn a new word
do you notice the void it fills,
an absence
you were happy with
all your life 'til now.
Like limerance,
a word I stumbled across
when reading of love;
“limerance”,
the intense infatuation you feel
at the start of a new romance,
that exquisite high
when you’re as alive
as you've ever been.
Obsessive love like that
can’t last,
how could it?
It either dies of disillusionment,
or enters the long contented life
of attachment.
But you can’t help chasing it,
because love's as addictive
as any drug.
And because, like heroin
no high is ever as good
as that first ecstatic hit.
Young love
crushing hard.
That state of limerance
we long to rekindle
when the thrill is gone.
And that, when things get stale
leaves you wondering why
you were once so mad for her,
felt
such insatiable desire.
Words beget words,
and this one brings to mind
limbic
glimmering
a liminal state,
as if edging into obsession
flirting with insanity.
But also limited
and even limp.
So the word contains
both its beginning and its end.
Is a wee bit of Limerick
in it as well?
The mystical town
where leprechauns materialize
from out of the mist
and then as quickly vanish,
where Irish wit
takes sharp-tongued delight
with an impish little smile.
As well as the mystical town
where your pot of gold
might — at last — be found.
A single word
that contains multitudes.
But the man who made it up
said he simply liked the sound.
So a word
with no etymology, or Latin root,
no reason to exist
except how it rolls off the tongue.
Who knew
you could choose a word
for its beauty alone.
A word I’ll never use
after I'm done with this poem.
Because what use is a word
that's so obscure
no one's heard it before?
A word
like the leprechaun
who’s there, but really not,
like the ones we know
but go unheard
because we only hear ourselves.
So a word
that will stay
between you and me.
The secret tongue
just the two of us speak.
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