The Foreign Language

The Foreign Language

Stale furnace.

Drizzling close to my skin; a silver sheath.

I had no word for drizzling of course

Not in English nor in my mother tongue.

Come to think of it.

A girl of sixteen; my future unfurnished.

Uncertain!

I boarded on the London train:

Armed with ten broken sentences.

In English.

Five of them useless:

Niggling me like in-growing toenails

Who should I say, “where do you live?” In English.

In foreign tongue

Not to my family. The only people I knew in this country.

I had to make friends quick

So that I could speak

 The foreign tongue.

So I did!

Now the foreign tongue is my mother tongue.