“I was seven years old, soon to be a hundred.”
So many hidden meanings in a sentence
which I could never translate for you,
precisely and
literally
as the poet imagined it.

While the translation has been created
the true meaning is lost in between
lines
inhales
and exhales.

Now, in this time
but there, in some other space
where I remember my first language
without which there,
somewhere else,
“you are neither a child nor an adult.”

I went into another story
into the space of another language and
“Here, where I am
I am reforesting, waking up, moving closer and spreading the sky
for more space.”

Do you hear how childhood
raises itself,
recalls
and sings?

About language
in which we learn
how to
speak
walk
think
observe
daydream.

Language
which simultaneously reveals
our identity and all our personality.
Language
in which you can discover everything
in these few words
“between a little bit and nothing,
and what is so much, so much,
just enough to rejoice.”

Ae.

Language in which you can reveal nothing
and hide everything.
All the things I never even wanted to tell you.

Without my first language
I wouldn’t exist the same
I wouldn’t sound the same
maybe you wouldn’t even recognize my voice somewhere in the dark
and shake my hand while asking
So, hello, how do we know each other?

Can you hear the language singing?

“The birds are cramped in my head…
got into my head they want…
inside outside, outside, inside
as if that’s the same?”

I certainly exist differently in other languages
but I do not reside there.

We can only reside in the first language.

Can you hear the language …
Defiant in laughter and feat?
revealing us
exactly as we are
literally, by the words of our poet
nothing is lost between the lines
precisely, as we imagine ourselves to be
since we were seven years old.

“I was seven years old, soon to be a hundred.”
I’m afraid that one day when I will be saying this sentence
I will be
there,
somewhere
someone
in another language
aware of the weight of its untranslatability
and I won’t be able to tell you anything more, about it.

©Tina Bikic