Mother Tongue

I danced around letters A to Z

lost some characters in between

developed some others unknowingly

Most people have minds

filled with neat little boxes

I have a box for:

Birthdays to remember

Recipes for quick dinners

Don’t forget, I’m also a mother

with two little voice boxes

echoing after me

I only have one box for languages

As a collector of languages

This has been challenging

And a few pieces of each remain all tangled up

like years of debris in a forgotten swamp

Spanish has oozed out

Chinese flattened into silence

English completely broken

Danish barely balancing on top

Japanese like little half eaten mushrooms

I try to keep up with my children

they are flourishing in the wetlands

native, moulded, natural tongue dancers

I tell them "speak to me, dance with me" but they continue dancing together

barefoot on muddy moss

strange to me

me strange to them

slipping into the swamp again

collecting all the words i can

to be a mother in a foreign land