The Song of My Words

The Song of My Words (A Short Story)

When I was born, there wasn't a name for what I was. I belonged to no country, no nation; nobody owned me. And yet freedom was the farthest from what I had. Eventually, they called me 'alien,' for that was all they knew me to be. Not of their own, peregrine. That's how I saw it, at least. For them, it become a question of worth, a definition of ungranted opportunity. But my cries then were not for opportunity, but because of the blinding light of the world before me.

I've come the thrive in the darkness.

Even then, they couldn't understand me. Garbled chirping burst forth from my lips, flowing as a ceaseless fountain of rushing water. I was as much a crow as any, stark against the light the world before me, echoing hollow chants that rung dry through the air.

Speaking was hard. My tongue clucked inside my mouth, striking the walls of my mouth in a pattern I couldn't swallow, folding and warping in disconfigured ways so that upon opening my mouth in utterance of syllabic sounds, it would merely roll forward and flop uselessly against the sides of my cheeks.

When I was not learning, or at least trying to learn, how to speak properly, I would roam the grounds before me. I did not, at that time, know where I was, knew nothing other than I was to call my location home. And since I knew no other home, I had no point of comparison. Between soft, fleshy pink gums poked the crowns of ivory teeth, which shone in the dead sunlight in the shape of a smile. I was happy.

I did not yet know the horrors of this world, nor the struggles of which I would come to face, all I knew was life in the dry, arid land of someplace my parents would tell me was the best place we could call home, given our situation. Given our blood.

Growing up, I would often find myself bored between eating, sleeping, and the teachings from my parents, who themselves were also learning to produce the same set of harsh sounds known to the inhabitants beyond the desert as a language. Having stared at the dusty floor for too long, or drawing little shapes in the dry earth with a narrow piece of driftwood more in the shape of a pole than a log, I would wander throughout the encampment where I was held, tanned skin pushing aside the openings of dozens of white tents as I searched for more of the world.

All around me, as I soon came to realize, there were other aliens too, of varying ages. There were tall aliens, and short aliens, aliens with big eyes, and aliens with small eyes, aliens whose bare, dirt-flecked toes poked through old shoes, and aliens who bore familiar tears.

Together we bonded over our solitary situation, and together we raised each other up. Together they shared.

And they shared a common tongue.

I've always heard my parents speaking, but I never myself was able to replicate those sounds at such a young age, and when I was being assailed with new words and sounds of a new language, the overwhelming amount of stimulus riddled my head with more confusion.

I preferred to remain mute, even be it not out of my own desire, but rather out of inability. I've always thought it more interesting to listen than to speak.

And so, I listened.

Every day I would crawl my way into those tents, dragging my stick behind me, and I would plop myself on the floor in the center of where everyone gathered and listen to the flow of sounds bursting from between their teeth, that strung each syllable into the next in vibrating frequency that passed through my own body and made me desire to riddle my body with new vibrations, to get up and move myself to the rhythm of the music they spilled from their tongues.

That was how I learned to walk.

The music ebbed and flowed through the air like the gushing rivers from which our scarce water supply comes from. Each note floated gracefully into the next, and with a chorus of voices those sounds quivered and hung, dove and soared in individual patterns beautiful and unique in their own song. Each note possessed its own key, its own frequency, a word I learned then. It's own sound.

And with the vibrations and the waves with which the music roared, echoing in a voice loud enough for my little ears to hear, those waves surged from the churning sea of song and lifted me up on its cresting hill, until I was set gently down upon my knees, and with one final push from the tug of the moon I was swept onto my feet and began to shake and bounce and twist and leap, lifted on the heights of the whistle of the wind, the soft sounds of the night's breeze, the calling of the birds that soared through the sky, the stamping of feet on the vesicated ground, and of course, the song of the words poured from the open mouths of the people, my people, lips parting and curled softly at the corners, drawn up into broad smiles.

And in the middle of the desert, the barren, sterile land that bore no life other than our own, in spite of our estrangement and languished souls, we all shared one thing in common.

Our tongue.

While those who named me alien urged me to learn how to speak "properly," my tongue yearned to flick like a hissing snake and rattle against the roof of my mouth, clattering and singing with a song that flowed within me, the humming of my blood, the thrumming that buzzed beneath my skin with a melody that while it felt to be so far was at the same time so close, inside of me. Part of me. I had heard it a thousand times from the songs of my people, but I had never once joined in part of their calling.

At first, the words leapt out of me without even realizing so. I heard them from the people with whom I shared my childhood, I heard them in the conversations between my mamá and papá, for that's what they were called, not some other silly names formed in the brisk, harsh language I was being forced to learn.

Why couldn't I just speak how I knew?

My voice couldn't be heard, but the people with me helped me learn a new language, a new song to sing, for the other crows to hear my calling.

I had found my wings at last, but they were not my own.

They were of my people, the people that shared that same music in their veins and the flourish in their step and the accent of their tongue.

There was a certain flight that I felt with the song of the words I began to learn through the development of my own native tongue, that fluttering pattern of wings that soared through the air and flew higher than I could ever dream of flying, but somehow I would soar on my own, backed by the song of my people, the song of my words.