TAKING WORDS FOR GRANTED 

I always had them,
used them enough—
maybe not aloud,
but certainly
across all kinds of paper,
even oh very young,
unsure
what I'd leave behind. 

I was writing.
I was making art.

No one ever sat me down
and told me
I was building a life atop
everyone else's temperament,
that my fluency
was an interpretation
of every language
but my own. 

For years
I sought people
who felt familiar
instead of people
who could keep me safe. 

The same questions
appeared
on paper
and in my art: 

What the f*** is happening?
Why does this keep happening?
When will someone
choose me first?

When will I?

 I became
the low-maintenance one,
walking into a room
already knowing
the ending,
already rehearsing
the revisions,
arriving prepared
to become
whatever shape
the story required.

 I never understood
the cost.

 Or that therapy
had another language
I could not yet speak.

 No one told me
the walls around me
were older than I was,
 that the sticks and stones
had broken my bones,
and I mistook
the brick and mortar
for home.

Clarity came late
and there was no party.

It sounded less
like revelation,
more like mistranslation.

Like discovering
I had spent decades
speaking in
foreign tongues. 

And anger
became necessary.

Not because
it changes the past,
but because
it finally sounds
like my voice.

Turned inward,
it became silence. 

Oppressive.
Depressive.
Compressive.

Turned outward,
it becomes
a language
I recognize. 

As a child,
I did not have the words. 

As a teenager,
I had no distance
in the rearview mirror. 

As a young adult,
I knew only
to follow
the same map. 

My middle years
taught me
sharp curves,
roundabouts,
speed bumps,
deep ditches. 

Now,
I am free
to love
and hate
everything
that became,
everything
still becoming,
everything
that must
learn
its own name.

What came before:
Trials and tribulations,
Unmarked trails
through brambles.
Bridges over raging water,
fire snapping beneath. 

I crossed anyway.

I am here now,
before
the blank page. 

I can place
my words carefully,
or tear the paper to bits
and begin again tomorrow.

What I will not do
is surrender
my language. 

Every morning
arrives
asking something new.

For the first time,
I answer
in my
native tongue.