Each time she phones them
she speaks a torn, bastardised version of it –
a calcified, roots-ripped-up version of it
a black and white, grandparents version of it
until it’s no longer what you could recognise
as a breathing, living thing. It is now unmistakably
her Ukrainian – reformed in abstract each time
she calls a country that vanished sixty years ago.
When she speaks it, it is a gift with no recipient
in her mouth it is a shadow, a shallow imprint
of where a language used to be. I often wonder
if I examine her tongue closely, whether I’d see
written in clumsy, childish script
her Ukrainian word for exile
