Lost Wor(l)ds

Write about your Mother Tongue they prompt.

Aney, what can I say when I have
such a limited knowledge
of my ancestral language?

Shall I speak of how my tongue
no longer dances easily
over the few words I know?

Should I apologetically explain that
the first language of my mother,
and her mother before,
was that of the invader, the coloniser?
– That world ending tongue
with its insidious, placeless lexicon
which has diminished the globe,
silencing so many
of the ways we spoke.

Tell of how I am left
clinging to an odd assemblage of words
that embellished my family’s conversations
throughout my childhood?

Tattered remnants of language
whose cadences can still evoke
an unexpected head waggle or sentence ending in ‘no’
in that strange way
Sri Lankan grammar signifies a question –
“You know what I mean, no?”

Those deeply buried roots
that bring not just my tongue,
but my whole body alive
with its inherited knowing.

Even if the words that bubble up
in these moments sound foreign
and terribly mispronounced.

Ghosts of lost worlds
and tantalising fragments of belonging
that I can mostly ignore,

except on those days when all I want is
the comfort of my mother’s warm hug,
her deep brown skin
and her voice that over 30 years later
still carries the accent of our birthland.