When I say aasaa    the six-year-old sings
asato ma sat gamayaaaaaaaaa

and I say no      not asat: untruth
but aasaa: is

I say      think of how lit
and little    mean different

things: little finger        little you
nothing to do with ignition   think

of way and wait    of whey and weight
of any permutation of sounds that share

vowels and consonants     that hold meaning
only in the palms of their context

which I hold open when I speak a two
or three word sentence in some attempt

to express in a way that feels familial
familiar         or to transmit

something of my home language
in my home where no one else knows it

where every time I say aasaa       he sings
asato ma sat gamayaaaaaaaaaa: Lead me

from untruth to truth
and I am trying but

the truth of the ears
often matters more.

Contributor Notes

Before I started school in London, I used to speak to my parents in their respective dialects of Konkani. These days in Northern California, I often feel compelled to express myself in my first language, although my children and partner only know a few words here and there. While I am grieved by the futility of hoping that future generations may retain a language that is barely spoken in the community around them, I also appreciate benign multilingual collisions and embrace the transmission of language as a creative, dynamic, immediate experience.

Shilpa Kamat has an MFA in Creative Writing. Her chapbook Saraswati Takes Back the Alphabet was a finalist for Newfound’s Gloria Anzaldúa Poetry Prize. You can read more about her work at shilpakamat.com.