I am Language is

Sun

 

I am Language is

I am not entirely grateful for English

I am good at how I read, speak, write and listen

even though I can’t fully claim that by the outskirts of my informal tongue

I am not enough as I read, speak, write and listen

I am not celebrated but challenged

I am constantly at war – speaking and writing, even though my people had their fair share

I am not entirely grateful for English; the colonizer’s work in stone

But I am within English

 

Language is the manipulated land mass that surfaces

From the trenches of hellish land disputes with unmarked territories of dialects

Language is the longest and loudest migration

A road trip with many other languages packed in the backseat

Even though English is easily in my reach

Language is distant simplicity

Language is conniving

But language is within me

 

I am not entirely grateful for English

A language so far from me yet so familiar

Rising still from concrete, language is I am

 

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About the Writer

Sun is a community performer, poet, and lover of words. Her body of work is comprised of experiments, quirks and hidden codes. She is of Somali descent and resides in Toronto where she has shared her bulldozing articles and essays on current issues, stigma and personhood featured on Canadian magazine Black Cabinet and webzine Araweelo Aboard.

Editor: Emily Norton