Dear Friend,

I wield this tongue as if I own it. (What do we own, really?) It is a home to me. (I've lived in books all my life.) I can tell you a long tale with it. I can scare you. I can make you laugh. But some days, it feels like marbles in my mouth. And conversations turn strange as I dance around blind spots and quicksand. (Dance is too graceful a word.)

The old tongue bubbles up, a word or two, or an entire phrase. I've lived with two tongues entwined in my mouth like a vine entwines around the window sill. I think in one, I feel in one, I dream in one, but why is it that the other still holds to me like a burr over my heart? I don't hate it, and more and more I mourn it, as it thins and thins as the years pass. I guess I've underestimated it.

I once translated a poem from my old tongue to the new. It felt like a betrayal. (The writer would have hated it.) I failed anyway. "The fin of your shoulder" is not equal to "Sa palikpik nang 'yong balikat." It was a happy failure. I wish there were more poems written in that tongue. (There are. There will be.) Surely, our people are still writing. Surely.

In the meantime, I live on in English. My heroes speak it, and so do my villains. The radio sings their songs in it on endless repeat. The poets weave their glorious poems in it. And my people, too, we wield it like we own it. (We do. They left it to us. Finders keepers.)

Of course, who will listen when we speak it?

Will you listen, friend?

Yours,
Mayumi