I only speak one language. In business
it is considered universal.
I am not in business. The language
I know has done so much damage,
I would like to know another.
Sometimes when I hear words in another language,
their meaning is known to me, but
when my tongue speaks them, it sounds
like the only language I know, English.
Most people assume that if you only know one language,
that language was easy to learn.
English and I still battle.
Once a school administrator
asked me why I wasn’t more open
about being able to speak Russian,
I laughed at this statement.
I can hear it in your accent,
he said, again and again.
What he was asking me to do
was lie, which is something one can do
in any language. Although mostly my battle
with English is not about speaking.
First it was about reading, and now
writing. I know I am a writer,
that does not make writing
less of a battle. The physical act
of it defeats me. I am grateful for
keyboards, for editors, for grammar checks.
Still a teacher calls me lazy, a student
asks for a refund because of a spelling mistake.
A friend told me in Japanese the way
I see words would make sense,
that in another language my disability
would not be one.
