My father stared at me with a long smirk,

lacing his flattened lips with a packet of worms.

He placed his right finger on my closed mouth, 

opened it, looked to the sky and smiled.

I frowned through the narrow slit of his palms.

My brows knitted his soft hands together.

We were walking along the dirt road

where he spent his youth drunk on sorrow.

We arrived at the herbalist’s, a loose house,

with the shape of my father’s dying tongue.

Give him a new tongue, my father whispered.

The herbalist smiled and almost laughed.

He pulled me over at the back of my head,

gripped my neck, raised my jaw and yanked my eyes.

You’re right, my friend, he needs a fresh tongue.

This one is too long and too mild.

Something cursed through me like electrical circuits.

My body convulsed in the aftermath of shock.

The crudity of hope gave me heartburn,

though I saw through my father’s surface water.

And I knew at that moment that I was alone.

Maybe there was no father, just a mirage.

The exchange was as painless as the journey home,

where my mother and sisters waited for me.

A knowing look on their faces felt forlorn,

their mouths open like a hole full of black ants.

When I lifted my jaw to show my new tongue,

my mother’s face wore a veil of unknown pain.

I turned to walk into my new room, cradling my tongue,

tired, solemn, smaller and violently shaken.