by Ella B. Winters
Saying I love you in my mother tongue
is impossible. My mother never loved me
in words. She gave up a continent
for me, its contents traded
for a feathered hope of better. For me,
she went to scrub the floors in houses
we could not afford, came home
and scrubbed our floors, as well, then
shopped, and cooked, and mended,
and then scrubbed some more.
The days all slipped into the slit
between the scrubbing and the cooking,
like errant peas dried in the gap
between the cupboard and the stove,
and there was never time for words.
So now, my mother tongue sticks
in my throat like the smell of bleach
and cumin. I’ve had to learn
three other languages just to find words
to talk of love, and even so, sometimes
I’ll just offer to hem your trousers.
This poem previously appeared in Shadow and Sax.