Second Language

When you have to leave home
the word belonging loses the be
and just the longing is left.
When your language isn’t spoken
by anyone,
when you have no one to talk to in it but you
your memories stop
trying to speak except in your head.

It’s never only a home that’s destroyed.
It’s the home of your mind, too, cuckoo
with no way to speak of all you Knew
of speaking.
Of home.

You can’t ever completely survive
the leaving of your home
if no one dances the dances
you grew up with except the trees
and you’re not as funny
in any other language
let alone a second one
but Everything is joking in yours,
crows winking silver-eyed slapstick
as you dance with branches
fall down laughing with the leaves.
Thought of as non-assimilating.

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Anne Walsh

Anne Walsh is a Poet and a Story Writer.
She’s been shortlisted for the Newcastle Poetry Prize twice and for the ACU Prize for Literature.
Her first book of poems, I Love Like a Drunk Does, was published by Ginninderra Press (2009, Australia).
Her work has also been published in the U.S., including a short story, The Rickman Digression, by Glimmer Train. Her second book of poems, Intact, was published in January 2017 by Flying Island Books.