All my life, I have been quiet, mother.
My tongue,
my mother tongue unknown to me.
Konkani,
a language,
my mother tongue.
Language escapes my grasp,
so I remain quiet,
mother, I will sit quietly
in the empty corner
facing away, facing within,
inside, outside, reside
on the slippery slope
to mind within no-mind.
Learned French for all four years
during high school,
spent one week in Paris
for Spring Break in college,
totally anticlimactic,
my friend was no longer my friend.
My friend became my enemy,
I learned white people take care of their own.
Yet, I continued to study
what was available to learn,
Russian in college instead of Polish,
languages filled a gap,
a hole from my absence,
not growing up in India,
in Bombay or Goa,
learning Hindi
or Konkani.
Languages became my fascination,
to fill a void,
an emptiness,
a lack of opportunity,
who provides encouragement to:
non-black children,
non-white children,
non-latinx children?
In this life, the rest of the world matters...
very little to grown adults,
especially during the 70s,
no one seemed interested...
their discrimination bias
kicked in, along with sex
in the back of a van
during recess.
For we are the forgotten, latchkey kids
who stole, set fires, and got good grades,
while living with alcoholics,
drug abusers, workaholics,
immigrants from Asia
who could never fit in,
always minorities
without community.
England to New York to California
to Memphis to Chicago to Nowhere,
too old now for recognition,
as a child it would have mattered,
as an adult, I have nothing,
when no one shows concern
adults suffer the loss
of participation
in love and life,
mother.
