‘My mouth is burning. I cannot touch you and this is the oppressor’s language.’ Adrienne Rich.

I need to reach you with words. To make words that I use touch whatever site of joy or suffering you find yourself in. I find myself doing so with language that isn’t mine. Language that may not touch you. Yet I need to reach you.

I think about these words often when I find myself in circles where people espouse their authority over anything. Forgetting even their authority may or may not still be accessible to people. I realize we can touch people with the works of our minds, with our words too. But yet, even the language we use may not be accessible to people. Of course we can make language and our work do what it is supposed to do. Or we can take the oppressors language and turn it over its head. It’s something that I have been toying with. Liberating my self in language. Choosing to close this with no wahala. I go change how I speak to una one day.