I wonder often if:
the space I occupy and
the words I speak are
truly my own.
If I am entitled or worthy
or good enough to lay claim
to words I try to make mine,
as they run and disappear in
my lack of enunciation,
my uncomfortable pronunciation –
When I speak in a language
Mama cannot comfortably maneuver –
but I am uncomfortable
with anything but this.
When I am startled,
shocked even,
at how quickly the thoughts
tumble through my mouth.
Shocked,
at the point of pride that
was my prowess with words
that were never mine-
especially because
they were never mine.
When I think back
to days of Catholic school classrooms,
where we were told to think
in a language that didn’t belong to us,
to abandon pride in our past,
and that rush of complacency
because I did it without being told,
because I laughed when others could not,
because it set me on a pedestal.
It made me better.
I remember
the carefully cultivated sense of shame
nurtured by adolescent cruelty –
my face burning at Mama’s hesitance with
words that came so naturally to me,
my disregard of sacrifices,
of her embarrassment
of my privilege.
And now,
“When did you learn?†they ask.
And often, so often
I am tempted.
I am tempted to ask how,
how they learned to think,
to live,
to say.
But these words,
They are not mine
And I have no claim over them.
or, for that matter,
over those that
were meant to be my own.
For we are children of
legacies that took our tongues,
but left no adequate substitutes,
no replacement we could
build our fortresses around,
and we are forever lost
and forever stumbling.
~ Sanaa Jatoi
Sanaa hails from Karachi and studied International Relations at Mount Holyoke College. She is currently trying to figure out what to do with her life, and continues to write in the meantime. She tweets at @sanaajatoi.
