Language > place

This is a poem, written for the 9th issue of Language>Place blog carnival.

The house I will live in

The rhythms of my tongue lie

buried in the safe in my mama’s house.

The poetry of home

is now foreign to me, not due

to the lack of words I left behind,

but lack of meanings I haven’t yet learned.

I know not how to speak

and will anyone understand

or want to?

Hiding in a place with no windows

but also no walls,

I speak a language with a single speaker,

language in which every word is a (life) sentence.

If a tree falls in a forest …

If no one hears what I say …

To whom do I hand over my memories

if there is just me

and from where does the echo

bounce off

in this desert of lostness?

My essence condenses into rocks

I will use to build a house.

It will define where I begin and end

in this world village of no limits

and I will open the windows

and let in the air tainted

with foreignness, tujost, estraniazione,

étrangeté … and make it my own.