My home is bordered. Like the carrying currents of our river, the borders are palpable: I am not the other, and the other is not me. Somebody tells me, this river is crossable. One day, I swim across – shore to shore, south to north – in that north, become another:

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poet - language = poet(translated)

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When I began writing “a breathing tongue”, I began in my mother tongue(s). Months of composing and erasing left me with five unordered, crossed-out pages: in all attempts to avoid words resonant with nationalist propaganda, my language was left barren. In fear of drowning, I swam to another. In that other, I became another, and the other with me othered. Here, up north, I line its ‘word-caves’ – back and forth, here and there – I clothe them until they finally breathe anew. I mistrust my mother tongue. When I inhabit it, I live as a foreigner: I collage, scribble, translate. I reshape what is already written.

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In what language writes a poet(translated)?

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A language that is

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carried (on shoulders), cut-up, sang, left and captured, slow, amalgamated, foreign, clothed, lined, resonant, drowned, drowned, drowned, drowned and swam across:

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does it still breathe?

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oh, how it still breathes!

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