#PrideOnThePage Day 6 (June 6): LANGUAGE
✨Break open the grammar of your native tongue. What sings in the silence?✨ What words do you reach for—or resist—when you write yourself? Language carries power, and also pressure. Today, explore the words you inherited, the ones you invented, or the ones that fail you. Make room for stutters, for rhythm, for silence as syntax.
I have always had a difficult relationship with my mother tongue. There are things I can only write in English—things my native German language cannot hold for me. It is a language of rigid order, of harsh authority, of deep gendering. I grew up shaped and silenced by it. And yet, like in The Lost Words, I believe in reclaiming language—finding cracks where life can grow through. This poem is a small act of that.
Throneroom Language came in boots heavy with rules. It marched down tiled halls, left the door ajar, found me crouched beneath the table of my voice. Der. Die. Das. Each word a bar. Each sentence an order. Each silence a safer shape. The Duden sat like a throne I dared not climb, its spine an iron rod in every classroom's breath. I grew careful with my tongue. Learned to coil words tight as wire, speak in sanctioned forms, swallow the rest. What could I invent when even my name had rules of its own? And yet— a crack beneath the baseboards. A syllable whispered in another tongue. An and, an if, an edge where grammar failed. English came like rain through broken panes. Pooled in my throat, softened the iron. Here, words unbutton. Here, syntax breathes. Here, I learn to unwrite the rules that unwrote me.
Thank you for all the wonderful creations so many of you have already contributed.
✍️ #PrideOnThePage Week 1: ROOTED (Foundations of Self) (June 1-7)
🫚 Week 1: Rooted (Foundations of Self)
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