serendipity

lessons

i will teach my children not to be ashamed of a language so incredibly beautiful. a language we are too afraid to speak because we think it is ugly on our tongues and harsh on our lips. how remarkable to be the taught love and kindness in the language of our ancestors, and not our colonizers. i wish my mother had done that. perhaps, then, i would be able to speak proudly without shifting back to what we call english. or perhaps, i would be a poet writing poetry in urdu. or perhaps, i would say nothing at all, selfishly wanting to keep it all to myself.