I do not speak — Irene marques

I do not speak in the original

I speak an adulterated language

That you passed on to me

You—who are also a fake,

Mumbling syllables that do not tell the truth,

the whole truth and nothing but the truth

I speak things that you and the world passed on to me

Scrappers that you all are

But I am not content with this charitable language

I dream and search for the tongue before I took in yours

Before you stole it from me when you gave me a hand and

Thought me your alphabet

And then syllables and words and sentences…

Before I knew I was mastering entire texts

Elaborate rhetorical schemes

Laws about the eternal and the universal

The earthly, the worthy and non-worthy

What a rose is what it is not

Why dogs are on the street

The local and the transnational

The Mexican and the Russian and the Nigerian

And the hypothetical creature on the Moon

I do not speak in the original

I spew a tongue infected by melanomas

Scientific and objective shortcomings that codify the mystery

I do not speak the original

Though I may occasionally, in distraction, enter the terrain

Of my língua pura

And babble ad infinitum

Until you wake me up

It is the night that saves me