I’m just trying to figure out how to function in this chaos.
Words rose to my throat
but never left my sealed mouth.
Yet they sank back into my chest
as I focused my eyes on the
flickering screen of my phone.
My mother answered in a glitchy voice,
her features blurred, her words indistinct.
I winced and wondered if she had noticed
sadness hinted in my voice.
To my relief, she was busy
fumbling with endless loads of paperwork,
soothing me with words of indifference,
“Well, I am very glad
that you are finding your own place.”
I nodded,
a perfect smile on my weary face,
but my chest bubbling with words
and words and words,
and swears and cries,
and turmoil and fear.
How am I supposed to tell her
that I am a mere stranger,
a foreigner,
an alien to those cold pale eyes
that gleam with curiosity and disdain?
How do I tell her
that this is an empty classroom
with rows and rows of clear desks
but none for me to settle?
How do I tell her
that I am asked where I’m from,
as if my entire face screams that
I don’t belong in this very room?
How do I tell her
the way the filthy-dressed loner across the road
spat at me with scorn
and growled a dog-like bark at my face?
How do I tell her
that the name with which they address me
isn’t my name?
It is a sound they can’t pronounce
with their confused tongues.
And,
behind silence and forgery,
fades my identity.
I don’t know who I am, Ma.
I have lost my name,
and I fear deeply
that I may have lost myself as well.
In a place where my name isn’t mine
how am I to function
within this chaos?