Mother Tongue

Before words

there were interstitial syllables.

The origin of language

is vibration,

though some say

it is silence.

Before the relentless grind of routine, 

everything was sketched

from telluric and interstellar oscillations,

primordial gestures,

murmuring frequencies—

Cells multiplying

and spilling into form.

Not into a single rock,

fish,

cloud,

horse,

vine,

or lizard,

but all of those

and so much more,

continuously transfiguring,

migrating endlessly

under the gaze of God:

Himalayan mountains,

the Milky Way,

Illyrian sea,

mist of forgotten breezes,

the boundless memory

of the ant,

whose tracks are laid out 

like ancestral star maps.

Whatever word,

or name

crosses God's lips

is divine spiral breath

becoming tree,

pomegranate,

rose,

like the morning dew

rising with each inhale,

as though it were expanding

under the wings of the pitacoche,

with its first flutters

spreading the sweetness

of the song

that fills our lungs.

Only the god of dance

could resurrect us in this way

from the endless grind of routine.

The divine gesture

accelerates,

heaves,

pulses,

flows within.

The body responds

to the first callings

and emerges from the embrace of the sea,

where the stars have always drunk from the deep.

Now fingers, arms, ribs rise;

wrists, elbows, shoulders rotate,

while hips shimmy across life's rhythms.

The body's embrace encompasses the sky

once again shimmering

with its silvery glow.

Smooth stones shine 

beneath the soles of our bare feet.

And for the first time,

we return to words

having rediscovered the gift

of singing the world into being—

—Lorena (2017, 2025)