Wrap my tongue around your words...

Sometimes I struggle to wrap my tongue around these crude words that form in my esophagus
 

....Words foreign in feel and thought and life and meaning
 

Consonants that PUNCH and p u l l to contort and twist my tongue into alien shapes and auditory sounds
 

Vowels that hurt me, to bend and twist-

like trying to fit my body into a vice meant to steal my magic
 

Like putting my neck in a collar to keep me in check
 

I want to break free,

dance and run with the wind,

yelling words in a language that I know exists,

but know not myself

They come to my mind and my being and then disappear as if a dream ...
 

Some distant genetic memory
 

Ingrained in my being,

but not in my physical body
 

I want to kiss with a tongue that knows its roots

and converses with its ancestors

Alas,

I am but a child,

lost in the ways of a world that will not acknowledge me unless I speak in

codes and switch my natural sense of self for a watered down version
 

Like koolaid for blood, this water does not turn into wine
 

It festers and pools in conjunctions and prepositions
 

It coagulates in verb noun agreements and withers in this elementary syntax
 

My tongue knows more about my history than I do

And I yearn for just a taste of remembrance

That will set my soul on fire

And my heels afloat with the dance of a people who are so close, but yet...

still very far away from me