What is the taste of words...?

What is the taste of words? If we hold them in our mouths, why can't we taste them? Why can't we feel them? Crunch of consonant, eel of diphthong, ovum of vowel? How can speech - voice - just be air and vibration? Ephemeral, immediate, performative, speech is uttered and then it is gone. It lives in the sound and the moment of its delivery. Conversations can be transposed to memory, but speech is both made and erase in the moment of its utterance. What is left of it?