We betray our mother tongues, embracing the languages of foreign nations that will never fully embrace us. In our pursuit to belong, we allow the strangeness to infiltrate our speech, twisting our words until our original tongues become a distant memory.

The familiar cadences and rhythms of our native languages, once flowing effortlessly, now stumble and falter. We mold our voices to fit a new vernacular, seeking acceptance in a world that views us as outsiders. In this transformation, we lose pieces of ourselves, fragments of identity slipping away with every foreign word.

Our mouths, once accustomed to the warm familiarity of our heritage, now struggle to accommodate the alien sounds. The vowels and consonants of our mother tongues, rich with history and emotion, fade into the background, replaced by the cold precision of new languages. We mask our cultural roots, hiding behind borrowed words, while our true selves remain hidden, yearning for expression.

Yet, even as we adopt these foreign tongues, there is a part of us that remembers. In quiet moments, when the world is still, we whisper to ourselves in the languages of our ancestors. These whispers are reminders of who we are, echoes of our past that refuse to be silenced. They are the ties that bind us to our roots, grounding us in a sense of self that transcends the barriers of language.

We may betray our mother tongues, but they remain etched in our souls, waiting for the day when we can fully reclaim them. Until then, we navigate this linguistic limbo, balancing the old with the new, striving to find our place in a world that may never fully understand us. 😔

©️ Beatriz Esmer