1 of 3 · Two Languages, One Notebook

What My Mother Prayed in the Other Language

She prayed in the language I was taught to lose,soft in the kitchen, before the six o'clock news.I never learned the words, only the tune.

I told myself it was a fair thing to choose —one country's grammar for another's view.She prayed in the language I was taught to lose.

I catch it still in traffic, in the bluesa stranger hums that sounds like something true.I never learned the words, only the tune.

My daughter asks what god we don't refuse,and I have no verse to hand her, no clear cue.She prayed in the language I was taught to lose.

Maybe faith was never in the words I'd use,but in a woman certain no one knew.I never learned the words, only the tune.

So let this stand for what I could not choose:she prayed in the language I was taught to lose.I never learned the words, only the tune.

2 of 3 · Two Languages, One Notebook

Two Words for Rain

My mother's language has two words for rain —one for the kind that asks permission,one for the kind that doesn't.

I have only the one word in this language,so I have to say soft rain, hard rain,heavy rain, like I am translatingsomething that was never meant to need it.

I think this is what faith is too:one word doing the work of several,until you meet someone who grew upwith the finer version and realizehow much you have been flatteningjust to be understood.

3 of 3 · Two Languages, One Notebook

Small Inheritance

Her keys still turn the lock, though she does not.Once, this hallway held more furniture than light.Under the stairs, a coat that was never mine to keep.Someone has to decide what a house remembers.Even empty, it keeps the shape of who left it.