I find my tongue fingerprinted, whorls woven by me and mine,
forked 50 different ways for tone and cadence,
vocabulary and dialect.
Humming “Oh my god,” the way Lizzy says it, bouncing
sacrilegious syllables on a cupped tongue.
“Certainly,” stretched out
for Santino, all squint and smile.
“Bitch on wheels,” and “go pound salt,” from mom, hand-me-downs
from her dad, who scrounged them up from the side of the road.
I scrape the side of the car or let the eggs stick to the pan,
and what else is there to say but, “Shiiiit,” stupid and silly
and sorry the way Ty says it.
The gross, goblin little phrases Lane coins
that I have to hoard in my rueful, grinning mouth.
“Girl!” how Amy shouts it, twisting the word
like whipping candy floss into its sugared, stick-stuck cloud.
Amalgamation grammar, idiolect idiocy shared by tapping tongues.
Estranged, banished bricks building a hub of hubbub,
a bounty of babbling.
Every word I’ve ever said I’ve stolen, light-footed and gleefully lifted.
Share my sighs, hijack my sentences, commandeer my cadence.
Graze gleefully, gluttonously, from my unruly garden of language.
Sing my words back to me, wet and warped by your newcomer’s tongue,
polished and baby-chick slick.