Lewi Alemayehu

I.

My mother calls, and I answer in English.
She responds in Amharic.
We have been doing this for years—
each of us speaking a different language,
each of us understands perfectly.

Selam, she says. Hello.
I say: How are you?
Dehna neh? Fine, she says, then: And you?
I'm good, I say.

This is how we love each other—
in the space between two languages,
in the translation that happens without thinking,
in the words we each hold in our mouths
like small stones, smooth from use.

II.

There are words in Amharic I cannot say in English.
Tizita—nostalgia, but not quite.
It means longing mixed with memory,
the ache of missing something
you're not sure you ever fully had.

My grandmother used to say it,
sitting on her low stool,
coffee cup warming her palms:
Tizita yibelañal.
The longing is eating me.

In English, I would say: I miss home.
But that's not it.
Tizita is heavier, sharper,
a homesickness that lives in your bones
even when you're standing
in the place you're supposed to call home.

III.

I dream in both languages.
Sometimes I'm speaking Amharic
and wake up with the words still in my mouth—
konjo, beautiful
fiker, love
yet, come here—

Other times I'm trying to explain something in Amharic
but the words come out in English
and no one understands me.
I wake up frustrated,
caught between tongues.

My therapist asks: Which language do you think in?
I don't know how to tell her:
I think in the space between.
I think in translation.
I think in both and neither.

IV.

My cousin's daughter is five.
She speaks only English.
When my aunt tries to teach her Amharic,
she wrinkles her nose and says:
That's not a real language.

My aunt looks at me.
I look away.

I know what she's thinking:
You speak English too much.
You forgot where you came from.
You let the language slip through your fingers
like water, like sand.

But what she doesn't know:
I practice in the car,
counting in Amharic—
and, hulet, sost, arat—
trying to keep the numbers from disappearing.

I whisper to myself in the shower:
Ishi, okay
Gobez, smart
Waga, price—
words I'm afraid to lose.

V.

At the Ethiopian restaurant,
the waitress speaks to me in Amharic.
I understand everything she says
but I answer in English.

She switches to English immediately.
Something in me breaks a little.

I want to say:
I understand you.
I was raised with these words.
My mother sang to me in this language.
Please don't switch.
Please keep speaking to me
like I belong here.

But I say: Thank you,
and she smiles politely
and brings me my doro wat
and I eat in silence,
tasting home and exile
in the same bite.

VI.

The first time I fell in love,
I didn't have the words in English.
All I could think was the Amharic:
Ewedihalehu.
I love you, but deeper—
I am loving you,
continuous tense,
an action that doesn't stop.

When I said "I love you" in English,
it felt flat, felt simple,
felt like something that could end.

Ewedihalehu—
I am loving you
in present continuous,
in the ongoing act of loving,
in the language my mother speaks,
in the words my grandmother used
when she'd kiss my forehead
and hold my face in her hands.

VII.

Sometimes I wonder
who I would be
if I had grown up speaking only Amharic,
if my tongue had never learned
the flat sounds of English,
the hard consonants,
the way everything is so direct,
so simple,
so without poetry.

Other times I wonder
who I would be
if I had grown up speaking only English,
if I didn't carry these other words inside me,
these sounds that mark me
as not-quite-American,
not-quite-Ethiopian,
not-quite-anything.

But mostly I know:
I am the space between languages.
I am the translation that loses something
and gains something else.
I am both words at once—
Amharic and English,
ግዕዝ and alphabet,
tizita and nostalgia,
home and exile,
belonging and longing,
here and there,
whole.