Somehow the word allow is in the word swallow and in swallow two wholly different meanings: one to take in through the mouth and another what we call the common winged gnat hunter who is, in all probability, somewhere near us now. Once, I thought if I knew all the words I would say the right thing in the right way, instead language becomes more brutish: blink twice for the bird, blink once for tender annihilation. Who knows what we are doing as we go about our days lazily choosing our languages. Some days my life is held together by definitions, some days I read the word swallow and all my feathers show.
This poem appears in the March 2026 print edition.
The post Literary Theory appeared first on The Atlantic.
