A Language I Understand 

                                                                                                        By Addie Plumb 2020

Did you know that there are roughly 6,500 languages?

Bonjour, Hola, Hello, Konnichiwa, Ciao

I know vosotros and nuestras

All of these words translate to mean something, but they mean nothing to me

I speak in taps, clicks, rhythms, and beats

I feel like myself when I’m not speaking at all

Dotted eighths, half notes, and quarter notes

I don’t speak for hours, but I’ve told a life’s worth of stories

I truly feel alive when I can feel the pulse of a beat in my fingertips

The world around me slows

My heartbeat syncopates with the sounds I’m making

I see the world through eighth notes and whole notes

While the world around me succumbs to the chaos

I lose myself in the music

It’s funny, I surround myself with people

But, my best friends aren’t people at all

My two best friends are the drumsticks that seem to stick to my hands like glue

They know me better than anyone in this world

They’ve seen me cry, they’ve seen me angry

While they may not seem like a lot, those two pieces of wood are my safe haven

My day is a loud one

From protein synthesis to polynomials and numbers I don’t understand

From the dribble of a ball against a wooden court to the sound of the keys on my computer

Click-clack Click-clack

My day is filled with noise

Sometimes, I want silence

Sometimes, the silence I get overwhelms me and I just want to scream

Tip-tap tip-tap

I drum my fingers on the desk

I can’t take the silence and the noise and all of it at the same time

The tip-tapping of fingers against a desk brings me back

This is how I speak, this is what I know

I speak in rhythms and beats

This is the language I understand

You want a poem? Beautifully painted words?

My art is my song, listen

Tap.

Tap.

Tap.