kan zoram tlang nuam

Why are these hills unfamiliar to me?
I have grown up in the hills.
Why strange this mountain air?
For most of my life I have inhaled no other.
Why, awkward now, this tongue I have spoken all these years?
Songs, once easy
now halt, now stumble.
Even laughter stares, drop-jawed and frozen.

Only the crickets, either totally not bothered or too busy mating,
offer a familiar indifference
as step after unsure step
I enter the land of my mother’s tongue – a stranger among my own people.

April, 2012