mother's tongue
This inspired-by-real-life poem is a contribution to the 16th STSC Symposium, a monthly collaboration from STSC's writers around a set theme. Our topic for this month is propaganda.
after my sister was born her father scolded my mother for not having had a son. then he kicked her so my mother left him and the country moving far, far away to another land. the court didn’t allow mother to bring her daughter with her so my sister was raised by her father in his language, the official tongue and told she’d been abandoned by mother. i was born much later in that far-away land, whose language my mother didn’t speak so she taught me the tongue she had learned from her own mother and told stories of my sister, the daughter in the country she’d left behind. every so often, she would call my sister long-distance and try explaining, in her father’s language, (the official tongue) why she had gone away all those years ago but my sister didn’t believe her not until years later when my mother returned home bearing old newspaper clippings of the court case against her father reported in his language, the official tongue. only then did my sister comprehend what had transpired all those years ago now, when I visit sister in that faraway land I can only speak the unofficial tongue handed down from grandmother & mother while my sister speaks her father’s language, the official tongue. sometimes we understand each other (mostly we don’t) but we are nevertheless bound by mother’s truth.
Beautiful poem!
Quality