A CONVERSATION
WITH MY GRANDMOTHERおばあちゃん
↓
As your eyebrows眉毛 furrow in maternal
concern, my palms begin to dampen.汗が出てきた。
Spilling over and dribbling垂れる down my chin,
the colloquialisms of a language I once felt
so intimately close to seep out of my system.
I feel as though I have lost the voice話し方が変わった of a local, my
tongue tinged blue青 in mourning of a language
I wear so proudly on my skin, and yet ...
... feel like I do not deserve to.私には価値がない。
As the sky空 saddened from purple to grey,むらさきからはい色
we entered a game of linguistics, each
one of us attempting to decryptかいけつ what
the other was saying until, finally,
we reached a mutual understanding.
Even though I now find myself lost迷子 in
this semantic labryinth迷路, you and I
both know this wasn't always the case.
Indeed, I once spoke your tongue舌 with
such ease that I coaxed sounds that could
convince a native,地元の人 embellished with idiomatic
exclamations.
Yet as I feel the stare of curious strangers他人 lock onto me, time after time again,
like a thick gauze of sound reverberating within the corners of my skull,
one overwhelming reminderなやみ rings in my head:
YOU MAY FEEL LIKE YOU BELONG
- BUT CAN YOU TRULY BELONG IF
THE PEOPLE WITHIN YOUR
COMMUNITY DO NOT RECOGNISE
YOU AS ONE OF THEM?
If this isn’t it, then there is no place for me. The East東 has irreversibly
woven itself into the fabric手触り of my identity, its faces顔 more heavily
involved, its language feeding more into the vivid and robust texture
of my life.
My skinはだ relays an incompatible message; but
I only feel comfortable, at home,心地より when with you.