Illustration by Alia Wilhelm.

prologue.

My mother tongue is filled with words I’ll never know. They curl on my tongue and never budge. Still I have recollections of phrases and fragments that I can’t piece together, but there is a part of my mother (and her mother and the mothers before her) that I will never have.

This is an anthology of the times I have lived through and haven’t, and the things that I know all too well and those I’ll never know. It’s an ode to words of a tongue that is no longer mine, to stories whispered to me that I will never tell.