"The language in which we are speaking is his before it is mine. How different are the words HOME, CHRIST, ALE, MASTER, on his lips and on mine! I cannot speak or write these words without unrest of spirit. His language, so familiar and so foreign, will always be for me an acquired speech. I have not made or accepted its words. My voice holds them at bay. My soul frets in the shadow of his language." ~ James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.

should i write this poem

in first person, second person

or missing person?

everyone's language is theirs

before and more than it's mine

but i don't mind it.

writing in a language

my mother won't understand

makes me swayambhu, the self-born.

i write on a platform

where every other train carries

bad boys, boy bands, or werewolves

but i don't mind it.

should you say you're an alien

with amnesia, so lonely, lacking

even the community of solitude.

should they write that they are two boats

chafing against the slow flow of the low tide

in a quiet sense of acquiescence.

~ ajay

10/7/2022