unfathomable-narrator

[unfathomable-narrator]

Muzzled

When I return home,

it feels as if I have entered a new country.

My tongue does not move the same way my cousin moves his,

my words are old milk, unlike my sister who speaks honey.

Words that my 1 year old cousin can recall perfectly,

are but fleeting noises of a past I wish to remember.

I could never write like my mother.

How she knew the exact accent, mark, and line to draw above the aieo and u. She has access to 29 letters but not even my 26 letters can help as some never have existed in her mind until she moved here.

Watching the news on SB Saigon was a waste of time.

Headlines were just letters, some normal, some funny.

My grandparents would point at one and laugh.

I would laugh only to pretend that their grandchild is the same one from decades ago.

Only one thing stops me from being the equivalent of a foreigner taking Intro to Vietnamese,

I can not write the words nor read and recite them to my family, but I can understand.

I can listen and know what the words mean.

This is not a blessing.

I am standing with my family. I watch my sister, my cousins, my mom, everyone I know who speaks Vietnamese.

They talk and I can understand them,

I know what they are saying,

I know it's about me.

Before, they would've addressed me in a half viet half english chimera of language that does not sit right with either of our tongues.

Now they don't even spit a syllable of our monosyllabic language in my direction.

They all know, I can not respond. My voice comes out in broken noises, misformed words, and feelings of shame.

It is too much for them to witness,

choosing to speak in the curse of broken english rather than in the language dragons gifted us.

I have been trapped and muzzled by the country my family lovingly calls home,

I am the one being punished for the actions of assimilation and erasure.

I am the one being punished for being a beast that spoke in a different tongue.

I am the one who pays for being born different.