Before I learnt “How are you?”, there was “Korek?”
That once enthusiastic snarl now leaves me choking.
My tongue strains to make the noises that echoed through my childhood.
Now those sounds no longer reverberate back to me.
Serendipity often makes an entrance when I struggle for a lexis,
Ancestral whispers are forced to give me a linguistic lifeline in a conversational dialectic.
My parents were more resilient to that brutal transformation.
They became coherent; on this side of the planet, they leave an indentation.
My mother yelled at me once saying: “to ba gange doit bliye to creole!”
How do I tell her that the anglophone is what possesses me?
My father sticks to the conventions, his rich baritone shudders my spine,
Does he understand me since my tongue is a weak serpentine?
I falter, mispronounce, misspeak, over syllables I trip,
Vowels and consonants shape themselves awkwardly on my lips.
Each attempt I make to reconnect feels futile - a charade,
Leaving me adrift in a cultural cascade.
A privileged education has cost me my cultural inheritance,
I am unsuitable for the ancestral load, instead I’ll pass down
shattered fragments.
*Translations:
“Korek” – “How are you?”
“to ba gange doit bliye to creole!” – “You are not allowed to forget your creole.”
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