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It begins, “ This English is not enough”
It ends, “I will live as long as you love me”
Translated loosely, it goes: my language is insufficient. It is a spoon of sand to the flood. My words do not know how to take the things within and drag them through me. My throat is an unstrung fiddle in an orchestra of violins.
We are often taught as schoolchildren that English is the most difficult language to learn. That our machine is better equipped than any to articulate our electrics.
When people ask me to say your name, I swell. It is a simple one. Four letters. And yet to pronounce it in a way that encompasses its wind and crown, is impossible with the tools I was given by this staggeringly insufficient English.
There is this thing in my cheeks. A rusted buzzard circling. I want it to erupt from the roof of my mouth. Like my teeth are shattered locks. My tongue, a brass knob melted into a ring. I want it to gush from me as if I were nothing more than flesh and saws.
There are words, words uttered in other far-flung outposts, that know the way to roll themselves around a thought and let spill evenly; with a banging drum in the cup of their vowels.
I do not have the right biology to speak you aloud. I should have been born everywhere else but in the clack of this underwhelming syringe of a language.
Every aching day out from under the shade of you:
Dépaysement,
in french - “The feeling that comes from not being in one’s home country”
The thought of living without you makes me want to tear my building apart with my thumbs. To grind it into salt with my chin. To soak the bed in flame. I want nothing of this home if it doesn’t contain you:
Potlatch,
in Chinkook - “An ceremonial feast at which possessions are given away or destroyed”
When I am inside you I am the least impressive part of your chuckling starfish of a body:
Wabi,
in Japanese - “A flawed detail that creates an elegant whole”
The long asphalt columns of the three AM platform when I can only guess where you might be sleeping:
Waldeinsamkeit,
in german - “The feeling of being alone in the woods.”
Your name is banging in my mouth. There is far too much to say. I wrestle with the thought of ever letting it down. To ever disgrace even a letter, a bone of it, to ever do a cell of its sound a single injustice. It is a flag. It is a crucifix. It is a mile long veil hung from a cliff. It is too much of me.
Your name is the sound other women make when they walk away
Your name is every crying infant I hear.
Your name is locked one bedroom apartment in Brooklyn
Your name is milk
Your name is dazzled coin
Your name is prayer
And I am the scripture lucky enough to surround it
Your name is ghost
And I am the sorry animal that gave it away
Chantpleure,
a now-dead French word which means to sing and cry at the same time
Torschlusspanik,
in german – Translated literally, “gate-closing panic,”
Yo’burnee,
in Arabic - You must be the one to bury me, because I could not bear the thought of living beyond you.
I can only weild the the mass of it in a whisper. Anything louder would peel me apart. I pity the men who would howl the names of their loved ones. Those meager piles of sound. These sarahs and marie. These ginas and janes. Your name is a temple I have been building since the sun spat every atom that would become you into the dead of space. Every father’s father has lent me a new brick. I have been dust all along. I have been nothing until I could build this name within me to say it just once. Your name is the last act any worthy beast will wage. Your name is the dagger of a bee.
If you must know,
It takes hours to write down and
more than two full minutes to properly pronounce,
it begins “this English is not enough”
and it ends:
“thank you, a thousand times, for allowing this broken boat to lie beside you. I will live as long as you love me.”
This is inexplicably beautiful and astonishing and I love every word. This is a prime example of why I adore words so deeply. Perfection.
