the words fall out of my mouth and spill through the air as I spout verses and lines holding intricate commas and delicate words weaving this web of prose rows and rows of english my native tongue the one that I will always fall back upon

and then I stumble over spanish estoy escribiendo una poema o no escuchando cuando mi maestro habla, habla, habla—en inglés, as a matter of fact and at home I rupture into bursts of poorly formed oraciones probablemente littered con many errors while mis padres ven a mi—están confusos porque they don’t speak spanish and so I have to translate debemos ir al carro lista necesito hacer mi tarea, pero no quiero este es mi español.

then I go to synagogue and there the lines of prayer in hebrew wrap around me and I wish I could speak more than just אחד, שתיים, שלוש, ארבע, חמש, שש, שבע, שמונה, תשע, עשר which is numbers one through ten and אָדוֹם, כָּתוֹם, צָהוֹב, יָרוֹק, כָּחוֹל (red, orange, yellow, green, and blue) because all I know is אוֹר because of the yotzeir or and לַיְלָה because of ma’ariv aravim and שלום and טוֹב and חג שמח and a variety of other religious words that I’ll likely never use in conversation

and then there are the languages where I know un poco I know that maison is house in french, and I could probably, albeit torturedly, count to ten I know ein, zwei, drei is one, two, three in german salaam is peace in arabic, though I can only spell in english I used to know a little bit of danish—the only thing I know now that bedstafar is grandfather and bedstamor grandmother and for some reason I know overleden is passed away in dutch

I wish I knew more I wish I could speak all the languages of the world, that from my mouth and from the tip of my pen would burst forth melodies of sentences and words that used to feel foreign but alas right now this, this poem in english, and no me importa and בוקר טוב and scattered miscellaneous other palabras these are my languages