sitting in silence

I am two years old.

My tongue moves faster than I can catch my breath in between words and sentences I don't interpunct nor pause shit I talk like this like this like this like there's a slight possibility that I might get interrupted and I can't get interrupted 'cause I have important things to say
as a two-year-old.

My baby sister who stinks of new-born gets way too much attention even after that one time when she scratched my face open which I KNOW she did on purpose with those lethal baby hands so when I take my time and carefully chose my words to snitch on her about her premeditated assault to my great-uncle he notices my growing annoyance and comforts me with words of loyal revenge: "I'll cut her hair.”

As if I have thought about this moment long before it happened, I tell him:
"No, cut her ears.”

I talk to him with the confidence of a grown up
I talk to him in Tmazight with the confidence of a grown up and
find comfort in a language that I'm unaware of
is named after mothers
a tongue I fit perfectly in, I move easy in,
I walk and dance and swirl in.

I speak with the confidence of a grown up
until I go to dutch speaking school with
dutch speaking teachers and
dutch speaking children

my teachers are worried about my lack of dutch
I am worried about their lack of Tmazight
but on their tongues lies authority
on mine only Tmazight.

they convince my parents to choose theirs over ours
now I go to dutch speaking home
and I speak less with the confidence of a grown up

When I'm eight years old,
I mispronounce the first sound of a word.
my teacher mockingly imitates and then corrects me
making the whole class burst out in a laughter that grows
and grows after each one of my failed attempts.
I still need five more to pronounce the sound correctly while
sitting in the back of the class, obediently shouting my embarrassment to the front
I never pronounced the sound wrong again.
Shame seems to be an effective learning tool.

While my teachers' faces slowly turn into military forces,
growing in number, patrolling the inside of my mouth
I learn that one language is more worthy than the other,
I learn to forget,
learn to forget tongue, mother
like brown babies robbed from families and forcefully put
under the suffocating wings of freshly new white parents
under new white patterns
I forget tongue, mother.

In their linguistic arrogance lies the false promise of acceptance
yet in those moments my tongue humbly obeys in languages forced upon me
I realise my being remains second class still, still savage, still
no one asked me if I wanted their approval in the first place.
I do not. I am not
home in them, not me in them, not in them.

I am in here, older yet further from home than
the two-year-old who cuts ears,
stripped away from my own words, force-fed others, left without any.
What lyric phrases can I use to
paint my deepest pains in
if the language holding me in a chokehold can never come near
the depths of my soul’s songs and the language of my soul is
long gone?

Mother, how tragic the story of the poet without tongue.

Still, savage, still, I need to speak a way out,
up, with a voice that carries
life until it’s heard and
faster than I can catch my breath
an unspoken promise to the two-year-old who cuts ears
who stayed close to me for when those military forces visit me again
still trying to patrol the inside of my mouth
or the movement of my fingers
or the gestures of my hands.

the two-year-old who cuts ears
now ready to cut tongues.

I will cut tongues

to eloquently remind them
that if I can't speak freely
they too will sit in silence.