The Smallest Mark That Decides Our Exile as a  Cartography of Breath

where i come from, a syllable is a fragile thing, balanced

on the breath like a bowl of water. & transition is not yet

so distant that we have forgotten all gestures of affection

for not playing safe with our tongues. & the tongue, also,

is a drumskin: each tilt of sound is a covenant. where

i come from, a boy in my village stands before the class,

learning my language, his mouth full of trembling syllables.

he says: i ǹ lọ [i am not going] when what he means is i ń lọ

[i will go]. & the road shuts its eyelids, the air punishes him

with silence. & teacher hears refusal where there was only

direction. & punishment arrives for the wrong height of breath

until words dam back to the pit of his mouth. & his tongue

already know the lift of how a small upward breath on the letter

becomes a promise in the calf. & the same bones fold inward;

the grave slows the tongue, lays a palm across departure.

he tries again: ì n lọ̀ọ́ [he is grinding it]. & the sentence opens

like a door that closes behind him. & the room hears stone,

pestle, grains breaking into dust. & his back is bent like

the word. in another way, he tries to mend it with more breath:

í ń lọ́ọ [he is twisting it]. & each diacritic becomes  a scar,

each tone a verdict he cannot escape. he whispers, again:

í ń lọ́ [it is twisting]. & the class laughs—because his tongue

has turned a road into a rope. finally, he reshuffles his silence:

ó ń lọ [he is going]. & the teacher nods. at last, the road opens

& the boy has walked into the safety of a mark. tell me,

what is a diacritic if not proof that even the smallest mark

decides whether a boy is a sentence of exile or a hymn

of belonging? i carry them on my body: a grammar

of leaving, staying, breaking, becoming. but i wonder:

what does it mean to be born into a language where even

a misstep of the tongue becomes a crime? where tenderness

can punish, where breath itself must learn discipline?

in my language, small strokes above a letter, teaching us

that meaning is a fragile house we must carry carefully,

or be broken by. one slip, one mark leaning the wrong way,

& meaning collapses. diacritics teaches us that survival

sometimes begins with the placement of breath. even the boy,

in this poem, learns quickly that tone is more than music—

it is the grave folding into the mouth to make the world yield.

& if people ask me how I feel about my tongue, i’ll tell them

about the rain that came sideways, & the flowers i bring

out from the concert of larynx—how they always die.