Language Is My Lover, Anonymous

Anonymous

Language Is My Lover

Language is my lover, and I met her in seventh grade. She was introduced to me by a girl with red hair and shining green eyes, Who wasn’t very good yet, I’ll admit, But two hours of practice a day can change that “exponentially.” Reading a classic a week rapidly adds “vacates” and “monotonous” to the

“quotidian” vocabulary. I fall in love with her and the words she weaves simultaneously.

Language is my lover, and in eighth grade, she is ugly. Our girl never warned me about this side of her before. “Dyke” and “bitch” and “fag” thrown at me, in this place supposed to protect me, Because I loved her too much, and she belonged to axe body spray and khakis, While I wore a plaid skirt and tights.

Language is my lover, but she’s a cheater. She cares more about being cruel than beautiful now, echoing from behind a stately desk with a rancid sweetness. Polished and pure and puritanical, Their vernacular reflects only my breasts and the brand between my thighs, The cut of my tongue, and my blood, shining with a rainbow. She laughs with them at these caricatures of me.

Language is my lover, but she hates my friends. She laughs as she cuts them to the quick, as hair that took three hours to braid is condemned to the iron. She turns on my best friend and attacks him as she did me, Except he bleeds blue, pink, and white, With a balm dripping from a needle that convinces his brain not to shut down until next week.

Language is my lover, but she’s always been fickle. She abandoned me for nuns and preachers then, She ignores my calls for a stranger with an anonymous profile now, And she’ll never stay with me long enough that I might explain What pleading for personhood is like with her many entanglements.