Touch comes before sight, before speech. It is the first language and the last, and it always tells the truth.

The line elevates touch as the most primordial and reliable mode of human communication. Before we can interpret the world visually or articulate it in words, we learn through physical contact—comfort, danger, affection, and boundaries are first registered through the skin. Calling touch the “first language and the last” suggests it frames the whole arc of life: from infancy’s need for holding to the end-of-life gestures of care. The claim that it “always tells the truth” contrasts bodily knowledge with the ambiguities of speech and the deceptions of appearances, implying that intimacy, fear, and desire are often most honestly expressed through physical sensation and response.