i learned to speak before i learned the script,
with effort and conjecture, spent my youth 
connecting sound to what surrounded me: 
a tree. a tremble. territory crossed 
and captured in my waiting mouth. i thought 
that el and em and en and oh were not 
distinctive elements but rather one 
entire phoneme formed from alphabets 
so elegant, their letters littered on 
my little minnow tongue. what mythic jump— 
the blend and jumble blurred my elegies
with euphony, my sounds with synonyms
or symphonies, and soon enough the world
was not itself. instead, it was a word.