America at eleven. Left my alley soccer games, a girl who stole my pencil case, faces I promised not to forget. Names gone now. Lost the words to keep them.
English came slow. Classroom phrases first—May I go to the bathroom?—then lunch-table slang, tongue tripping on consonants. Better wrong in English than silent in Chinese.
Fluency tastes like burnt coffee. Burned my accent for debate trophies.
Now I talk for money. Pitch decks don’t care where you’re from, only how sharp your tongue is.
Grandma calls. Static like wet cloth. I laugh when I should ask about her knees. She tells me I sound different, that my voice is heavier, stretched in places it never used to be. I don’t tell her that I rehearse my words before calling, that I keep my sentences short so I don’t trip on grammar I once knew instinctively.
She talks of dead neighbors, sick uncles. I hum in agreement. We pretend I understand.
Her wechat message waits, half-translated. The app substitutes sorrow for longing. I write back in English. Delete it before sending.
Language builds bridges. Also graves.
Do they curse me at home? Call me a traitor? Ghosts don’t need names.
They say you don’t forget your mother tongue. They lie.
Or the forgetting’s mutual.