Handkerchief, as words go, is an outlier.
Why not call it a damn rag instead?
Or any other name that is short
and less presumptuous,

conveying no more than what it is.
I think of a drunk, boastful German man
making up such a name:
we call it handkerchief in the motherland.

I see the word only in text, no one utters it.
Each time I read it, it feels foreign, imposing,
an imposter that doesn’t belong.
It lowers its head and elbows its way through.