play, pause, replay

my mother said language is the last to go, but i think we're first

it happens in the waiting line when my friend

leans in and shapes her voice into something that's

not hers. vowels smoothed out, edges tucked in,

an accent borrowed from where exactly?

a sudden lilt, a swallowed vowel.

how she says excuse me instead of sorry

and rolls her 'r's like they do it in the movies.

i watch her mouth move and flattern syllables,

and for a second, it's foreign to me too.

at the ticket counter, a man fumbles with coins,

his language spilling over itself,

thick, unbothered, unashamed. he does not

trim his voice down to fit inside another's ear.

he does not apologize for existing.

once, my mother told me that language is the last thing to go.

that even when the mind forgets, the tongue remembers.

i look over at my friend—the same one who once spat mango

pits into the dirt with me and cursed like a sailor—who is

now speaking a borrowed language,

tamed like a stray dog learning a new name.

i do not know this voice.

i do not know what to do with it.

my tongue is heavy in my mouth. it doesn't know

where to land. i wonder if it has already started to leave me,

piece by piece, word by word.

when did we start filing the edges of our words?

when did our own sounds begin to shame us?

somewhere, our grandmothers are sitting on porches,

tongues thick with stories they know we will never ask for.

somewhere, a child is learning to bite back a word

before it even reaches the paper-thin air.

when it's my turn,

i almost forget how to ask for what i need.

i realize i don't know which tongue to use.