the first word i ever learned to love became the first one i was ever ashamed to say
mother’s tongue was thick with it.
she let it slip into soup,
into lullabies, into the spaces
between my ribs before I knew
how to close my mouth around it.
(it fit so easily in my teeth then.)
i swallowed it.
(choked on it.)
spat it out in pieces
until it did not belong to me anymore.
after that, i only spoke it in mirrors,
mouthed it to myself in the dark.
(it sounded different when no one was listening.)
my mother called me for dinner
& i winced at the shape of it in her mouth.
(it was too loud, too thick, too much of me.)
so i buried it.
(kept it in my throat like a splinter.)
learned the cleaner word, the smoother one,
the one they did not flinch at.
(the one that did not belong to me.)
years later, someone asks me what i was called
before i learned to be ashamed.
i try to say it.
(but my mouth does not remember.)
teaching my daughter how to disappear
don’t let them
see you
too whole—
break yourself into pieces,
small enough to slip between
the cracks of their expectation.
you’ll learn the art of
being invisible
like a wound that heals before they notice.
(keep your body sharp and quiet.)
when they ask,
where are you from,
do not answer.
do not let them peel the name off you
like a fruit
that will rot before it is tasted.
(no one wants to know your truth.)
you will learn how to hide your hands
in pockets of air,
how to make silence
a garment you wear well,
(not too tight, not too loose)
so it becomes invisible,
just like your skin.
don’t let them
touch what they don’t understand,
don’t let them see
the ways you bend
under weight they can’t carry.
don’t show them
how it feels to be full
of things they can’t hold.
(they will want to break you.)
when they speak your name,
(don’t let it
taste like dirt),
don’t let it stick to your tongue,
don't let it fold inside your chest
and make a home there.
(your body is not their address.)
you will learn
how to disappear
in the hollow spaces
between their expectations
and their wants.
you will learn
how to hold your breath
when they look too long,
(watch how it feels
to be unseen).
don’t ever let them
see you
long enough to
know
who
you
are.
self-portrait as a sign language
The first thing they take is the mouth.
(then the tongue, then the name, then the meaning of hunger itself.)
A child learns silence before sound,
the way a body understands fear before a fist ever lands.
(Language is but not the absence of teeth.
Silence, the first lesson in survival)
My mother speaks in closed fists, in split-second glances,
in the way she salts the rice twice,
folds laundry at the edge of the bed.
(This is how we say I love you.)
My father has never called me by my name.
(This is how we say I see you.)
A boy asks where I learned to speak like this.
I put my fingers to my lips.
(Here,) I tell him. (Here is the first sound I swallowed whole.)
(And here, the last thing I could not say.)
I write my name in the air & watch the letters scatter like birds.
(Call it language. Call it exile. Call it hands spelling out a body no one reads.)
Somewhere, my grandmother dies without ever knowing my voice.
Somewhere, my mother mouths a prayer,
but I don’t know which god she is apologizing to.
I bury my hands in my pockets. I practice stillness.
I let the words rot between my teeth.
(This is how we say I miss you.)
(This is how we say nothing at all.)
Sreeja Naskar is a young poet with a passion for capturing emotion and complexity through
words. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in journals such as Crowstep Journal,
Gone Lawn, ONE ART, The Scarred Tree, Poems India, and others.
