Mishap

ends with pursed lips and a puff of air

              but starts with a closed mouth

and vibrating throat

a humming of our first note of ourselves—

              our objective case:

feed me, love me, watch me

then the subjective: a narrow column

              of impulse and irreverence

startled perhaps by the hissing

in the middle of the word’s path. See

              the curved aching

toward the whisper of—him? her?

In most other words, the two—

              placed next to each other—

fuse, shushing our objections.

But this word is cleaved neatly in half. The second

              half is happiness abbreviated:

not the beginning

of pleasure and then a wrong turn

              but rather a wrong turn

into sudden sweet happiness

that catches in your throat