I’m Gonna Stay Right Here In This Becoming

I had another voice before this. I believe it to be true. Somewhere in some womb, forever unknown to me, I heard a mother-tongue calling. But that was in another life I barely remember. A life briefly lived where I stayed. I mean, I was kept and I was not a stranger to myself. But I live this life now in a language I have coopted as mine through assimilation. Rough out of my chest but easy out of my lips, I speak in fragments; I know myself enough to utter aloud tales of reclamation and am unmoored from my people enough to be forever adrift from continuous connection. What an uneasy…