igbo is a language i knew once, but have since unlearned.
the result of:
1) a scottish assistant teacher,
2) the recommendation by the doctor of my autistic brother
3) a five-year-old version of myself tired of being asked why i talk like that.
//
which is to say,
my first language was one not native to the land i grew.
as if i were holding onto the roots of a country
i had not known to begin with.
my motherland's umbilical chord
wrapped around my neck;
forcing the igbo out of me
when i meant it's english translation.
//
if not the language -
the accent. the name. the skin.
all this (police) evidence of my crime:
an inability to belong.
//
so i searched up a tutorial on how to forgot the language you grew up with:
the steps as followed:
1) cut out my own tongue (the strongest muscle in the body)
2) dreamt in english.
3) refused to translate for my grandmother -
until it was no longer a choice.
//
and so, the next four children were mothered --
by the language of a country we were meant to be independent from.
(a language that took six months of primary school to master)
they never understood igbo.
//
whilst i wore black (skin) to the funeral:
heard the language even though i could no longer speak it.
a phantom pain filling the black hole
where my mother('s) tongue used to live
in other words, i did not realise the greek tragedy of it all --
until it was too late.
//
ran to my mother, tears watering the earth of my skin.
screamed, help me.
she replied, blue filling the brown of her eyes:
my child, i don't understand.
- my mother (tongue) is igbo.
YOU ARE READING
the failings of a surgically healed heart | a collection
Poetry「 WATTYS 2019 WINNER 」 the failings of a surgically healed heart, is a series of autobiographical poems arranged into six thematic parts to form a collection which examines the idea of the collective and how that informs individual. i. family an exp...
