An International Marriage

An International Marriage 


I learned a foreign language
because I wanted to speak to you.

Learn not just your words,
but your childhood,

your grief, the way your mother
folded everything in prayer,

the unspoken silence of why your father 
left the room without saying goodbye.

 I studied your syntax so I
can read your scripture.

But, I mispronounced your sorrows,
placed the wrong emphasis on your joy.

I never fully learned yours.
You never fully spoke mine

without stumbling on
the difficult syllables 

I fully knew—the hardened 
poetry of my grief.

As a compromise we created a language
that only you and I speak—

a foreign language that exists nowhere—
but between us.  

It lives in the way
you tap twice on the counter,

when you’re overwhelmed,
and I know to hold you.

It’s in the phrase
“Did you eat?”

which means
“I missed you.”

In the silence
after a fight,

that says
“I’m still here.”

the way I flinch
when someone raises their voice.

It exists in the way you told me 
about the sea you grew up beside,

how you mentioned that you 
still dream in the old rhythms.

Perhaps my foreign tongue
was hard to understand.

Perhaps you tried your best too—.
slowly forgetting—your language— to speak mine 

but now you hardly speak it at all.—
That language.

It is vanishing from us—
 —it seems.

I believed, two people alone
can become a foreign country.

Now, our words are full of sounds
no one else understands.

From morning till night, these incomprehensible 
people fly back and forth in their lively land—

their nation
built on words.

We have only our names and 
those thingsolder than both of us.

Still, something else
blooms—

in the way
we say “home”

and mean each other.
In the way

we say “later”
and mean “I promise.”

In the way we say nothing
and mean everything.

We have customs 
 sacred holidays— borders:

you make the tea,
I  forget the sugar.

we celebrate the anniversary of our first fight,
the day we wordlessly  forgave each other.

All those things shaped by
our wounds, history— our laughter.

Two birds migrating 
between two hearts.

No map can find us.
No passport can enter.

But we live here,
fluently.