Language [barriers/baggage]
My mother is not a fan of airports
always on edge that she is leaving parts of her [luggage/language] behind.
I watch her wince as an employee rifles through her [luggage/language] deciding what she can and cannot
keep.
My friend Mariam moved here from Abu Dhabi
and can switch between Arabic and English faster
than one of our lecturers flipping through a presentation.
Every time she opens her mouth everyone wants to know
how she manages to find space for all that [luggage/language]
Sometimes they stop talking mid-speech
and I watch their faces growing with frustration
as they struggle to find the right word
or
meaning in one language or even both
and I myself
have begun to suspect that sometimes even the smallest vowel can be
lost in [transit/translation]
Nawaal K is 20-something student currently living in the UK who spends her time between cleaning out stains in her lab coat and rearranging the poems saved in her notes app. You can find some of the ones that made it out alive on her Instagram account @flxw.d. She hopes to see you there.