Prosody

Every time I call home, someone asks what time it is in America. How many White friends I've
made. Why I don't yet have an American accent — it's been a year already. Why I still say
water not woda. And city not cidy. Is it still cold? You should resend that video of footprints in
the snow, my friend says. Last night, I laid my phone on my chest, the darkness of my room taut
as carapace. My sister asking why I keep eating twenty dollar meals when for equivalent, back
home, she could make three pots of good soup. You pay rent monthly? You can't evade taxes?
Seven hours ahead and an Atlantic between us, she asks why I don't believe she can tell me the
future. I laugh at each question. I don't stutter. In a room full of White people, my voice is a
condition. I know I am the absurdity of language. I know that I am also the premonition, the loud
scraping of dusty windows at the opening of the new. I am the suddenness of dialect. Because I
slow talk until my voice erodes the last wall of every room. Because all language is heavy lifting.
I watch them wait impatiently for the terminology of my sentence. Eyes rattling like coins. The
silence of the hall and the silence of their demand hanging low like hammocks over my
language. I enunciate. I stutter.