Handkerchief, as words go, is an outlier.
Why not simply call it a rag instead?
Or any name that is shorter,
less presumptuous,
conveying no more than what it is.

I imagine a drunk, boastful German man
making up such a name:
We call it a handkerchief back home.
I see the word only in text, no one speaks it.
Each time I read it, it feels foreign, overbearing.

Like an imposter who doesn’t belong,
it lowers its head and elbows its way through.