Crossed the Ocean to Drown

My grandmother calls from a 234 area code
She speaks to me in Yoruba
I close my lips in fear that I demand
Of her to speak in English with all of my white teeth

She prays for me
I say amen instead of Ami
It does not sound like blessing

I try to sing the lyrics to an anthem I once knew
I wish I could give it dementia
A reason for forgetting

I once had an accent as thick as my mother’s waist
Can’t recall the moment I lost it
Or the day I woke up less a silhouette of my mother’s land

My tongue swells in an anglicized mouth
A planted flag inflames my gums
It hurts to unstitch this new tongue
Rid it of an oral colonization-the invasion of foreign bodies in the mouth

My cousin, still African enough to have its memories hears the star spangled banner when I speak
She doesn’t understand when I talk of isms with my hands stitched to my chest
I am oyingbo because I eat Egba with a spoon instead of my hands
Oyingbo
Nigerian slang for westernization
For you let the ocean you crossed dilute you
In a party

I watch an unfamiliar dance
I am the American in the room playing the part of a Nigerian girl
A caricature in a headwrap
I hide in the shadows
I am the rodent that’s taken residency

My country spit me out
Calls me a stranger
Cause I bend my chest and heave a morning train ride
America swallows me whole
Say,
“So you thought after all these years in the pot you wouldn’t melt?”

To survive I’ve changed for a country that has not made any returns
Still coloring in the parts that have been whitewashed

My grandmother says I have forgotten her
She says she is getting old
Asks me when I will come to visit her
I want to tell her
“I am the furthest thing from home to come back to”
I let silence become the Ocean between us
“Am I still part of something if I have no recollection of it?”

—By Soré Agbaje