Dead Language

 

It was a long time watching you lose your language

So gradual that I couldn’t have warned you

That you were forgetting

The key words 

The magic words 

The abracadabra you came to me knowing

The secret code you told me, the one that opened me

Yes, it was a long time watching you unmoor

Floating away from nights laughing on the floor

I don’t remember the joke

Or even talking to you at all anymore

It all became reminding

It was my recitation

A mass all in Latin

An offering up instead of communion

But I remember it like a hymn

I remember it was beautiful and it helped me fall asleep

And I remember the headlines

The forevers and the dreamlines and the motherhood

And I wonder now what I would have heard

If I hadn’t already decided then

That I understood

The words you were choosing

While every day you were losing your language or

While I was never learning what you meant to say