Thoughts from a Thinking Girl

Para mi papa, en su cumpleaños

In my first language

words flow

pathways worn smooth from overuse

one story leads to the next

memories molded into sound bites

familiar now for the same old pains

a fixed vocabulary

my woundedness

your shortcomings

failed attempts to convey

love that offered everything other than understanding

understanding that offered no love

hurt, betrayal, disappointment, grief, accusations, leave-takings.

Words come fast, ideas rush and tumble,

the truth so confident in well-turned phrases.

Posthumously

you have nothing to add.

 

The privilege of fluency is to speak without thinking anew.

 

I have yet to memorize the Spanish vocabulary of pain

I blunder in the phrasing of feelings, needs, experiences

I mix up tenses, conjugate incorrectly, stumble with time frame

I cannot tell who did what to whom

most usually swapping third person singular – in both preterite and imperfect –

for first person

blithely attributing my shortcomings to any other subject in a sentence.

 

Literal translations create blank looks of misunderstanding.

No matter how many google-translations I attempt,

none convey exactly the well-worn truths I carry internally.

My habitual complaints

I was ashamed of you

I haven’t yet forgiven you

sound softer  

Me había avergonzada de ti.

Todavía no te he perdonado.

 

I speak sluggishly, deliberately

cannot take a syllable for granted.

 

Maybe in this new language

I will find my way home.

 

Tonight I speak to your memory in Spanish.

I slow down, hunt for words

use long pauses to explore nascent truths about us

await your response in the unfamiliar rhythm

listen for what our father-daughter story becomes

spoken anew for the very first time.