We Were of Birds.

she still speaks in tongues
    but these days her
       mouth grasps clumsily,
                    desperately at grammar -

remembering and rejecting sentence
     after sentence
wrongly influenced by small ethnic groups who feel
          they have the right
            to mangle structure
and call it correct after enough time has passed.

enough time has passed
   since her acquisition of this language
           (her first)
and now her articulation is
                        broken
       (as only languages can be).

her statements stand
  incomplete -
    shuddering, crumbling under
          their own unbalanced and uncertain weight.

her teeth and tongue are a clatter
     of altered pronunciations and
         words substituted from the
                      language of business.
(it tastes like metal)
       (I think she has to translate in her head)

we are the last breaths of a dying language
   (and she has forgotten so much -
         even the small things like
            how to ask the time
            and the infinitive verb for "to laugh")

I am still fighting against the
   possibility that we will one day be listed
      in a thick, hardback volume
between assassinated spiritual leaders,
   obscure mystical religions,
     and other things
            that have died.

thus I am left with a sense of perpetual anxiety,
   a constant shifting in search of equilibrium -

biting at my fingers,
   the insides of my cheeks,
pulling the dead skin from
                      my lips.

(self-cannibalism is a slow process.)

I watch as my roots wither
   (mother tongues run deep)
and I, too, find myself
   at a loss
       for just
          the right
                 word.