The 5-year old sleeper spy

English is the answer

I lost a language when
I lost my family
My home, my country
I gave it up it in mourning
To round it all up
Nothing seemed worth saving anymore
I drove it deep inside.

To comprehend all that I’d lost
I could have cut off my hair
Slept in soot
Ribboned my flesh raw
Tattooed my face
But these things were not culturally acceptable
So I divorced a part of myself
As all was going astray
Haywire awry disastrous
All bonds stretched and painful
Razors slicing me back
Remodeling me
Into who I should have been

So this was my offering
My token, my symbol, my sacrifice
I would become other
I would go undercover
I would sleep
I divorced my soul
I gave my language away
I buried systematically it
When all was lost around me.

But I was smarter than I thought
A fiercely protective 5 year old
I hid my soul in the language
That I had smothered,
Like a nugget of gold
Like a universe in a bead
A safety device for years to come
A treasure search within myself
The lock was hidden
And the key carefully placed into Oblivion
A dense quality of forgetfulness
I set signs for myself
For later
And went as far as to forget
I had.
I was the consumate sleeper


They had betrayed me you see
They put hooks inside my heart
And then, they yanked them hard, strong, again
Teasingly, diagonally, and yet more
To see if it still hurt
They held me
They had a map of me
So I pretended the hooks had come loose
And there was nothing left to hurt
All the while keeping myself hidden
Hardly breathing
Like the child Zeus fostered
By deaf and dumb nymphs
I would show them nothing
You can never find my heart
For
My heart is in a box
Swallowed by a fish
Swallowed by a bird
Swallowed by a cat
Swallowed by a phoenix…

No, that is a tale for children
My heart is in English
And the key, quite simply
Is the language itself
Nothing you can hold
But a song you can sing
Vibrations that purr and croon and comfort

French is make-do
French is for deceiving
For structure
For adult-pleasing
French is a decoy
For a zombie
For a sleeper.