My Mother Tongue

 

How do I explain

My mother tongue

Rejected me?

I'm Igbo

From the ancient kingdom of Abiriba.

I know the path to my family house,

The stories stitched into its walls,

The names of my ancestors

Yet I cannot gather

The language that gathered them.

"I dēkwu ïle onye mba"

(You speak as a Foreigner/Stranger)

My aunt says.

Her words arrive

Like a door I should know how to open.

How do I tell her

That I have tried?

That every syllable

Stumbles at my lips,

My mouth remembers English,

But forgets the lullabies

That first taught it to sing.

Perhaps 

I have lived in too many places,

Collected too many tongues,

Until my own began to sound

Like someone else's.

Perhaps I have been afraid

Afraid to mispronounce,

Afraid to be corrected,

Afraid to become

A stranger in my own language.

So I hide

Behind the comfort of Central Igbo,

Pretending it was enough,

While my mother dialect

Waited for me

Like a home

I kept walking past.

Maybe my mother tongue

Never rejected me.

Maybe

I was the one

Too afraid

To answer.

© Ebube