Lost In Translation

I can not write if not in my mother tongue 

I can not seem to find the words

Nor tell the pain of your youth 

Or the sound of the birds.

I might become stubborn and selfish,

As my pen can’t translate my heart 

In rhythms foreign to my mouth 

When I write words my mother can not understand.

I used to write in English all the time

To hide the depth of my silence,

Couldn’t say I loved someone unless 

I spoke like a guest, 

Like someone who wasn’t born 

With the sun of the south of France 

Rising above a first dance. 

I used to be a coward and hide 

Behind words that were never quite right 

Because it was better to say something 

The child I once was couldn’t get.

She would’ve been worried 

If she heard all the times I said “I love you”

Knowing it could only ever mean 

Half of what it felt. 

Saying “I love you” never was enough

I was chocking on my own words 

Because they were never mine. 

I thought : 

“What my heart can not understand can’t be dangerous” , 

And yet, here I was, 

Suffocating while I was betraying that little voice screaming : “Je t’aime”. 

I used to write my fears and tears away

In a language I could never make my own

Because it never saw me cry as a child,

It never grasped the prayers of my grandmother,

It never spoke in my dreams,

It never unfolded my truth. 

I love the sound on my tongue 

When I borrow that language 

-the one I have learned by singing and reading 

But nothing compares to the rhythm of the language 

I was raised to speak. 

Of its flow reminiscent of the waves ; 

Unsteady, dense and dazzling. 

There are no words that could make my heart beat 

And my mother laugh, 

As much as the first ones I ever spoke. 

There is no writing that could scream my love, 

If it’s not true to my roots

If it doesn’t make my blood boil, 

If it doesn’t burst my world and 

-make it pure.