Lovely ends nearly

as fragility—sharp taste,

tongue to teeth, plosive.

ALVEOLAR

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alveolar consonant (n)

Lovely things are often fragile, however this haiku began by pondering phonetics.  I imagined trying to explain to a ghost what it is like to talk.  We're shown in movies that ghosts can see and hear but cannot touch, passing through people and walls.  How is it then ghosts can speak, pushing air through a ghost mouth, contorting ghost lips and tongue to shape wind into speech?  They may understand conversation, but if never corporal, ghosts would know nothing of the bodily experience of blinking, squinting, humming and screaming, things babies learn even before language. As the haiku suggests, -ly and -ty are similar but different.  The suffix -ly places tongue between teeth, while -ty is alveolar, tongue just above the upper teeth.  Plosive, the sound is made building and blocking airflow.  Having tried to explain to deaf children the difference between sounding f and v, the trick I've learned is holding a hand to your throat.  (Fan vs. van.) Vibration is the only difference.  Try it.  The same is true of s and z. (Sap vs. zap.) Other trivia: The kids in this image have goldfish-cracker teeth. Writing about alveolar consonants makes me think about that old man in that famous book by Nabokov, and how the book’s title is "the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth." You can always count on a murderer for a fancy prose style. Does this haiku mean something different to you? Contact me!