“If you do not tell the truth about yourself you cannot tell it about other people,” Virginia Woolf. Respond to Woolf’s quote in the medium of your choice.

[ ENGLISH TRANSLATION: ]

Linguistically Ambiguo
By Lorenza Ramirez
Like the web of a spider,
The threads of different tongues
Are woven in my mind,
Overlapping and interlacing.
Every single new word I learn
Falls into the infinite sea of words
Becoming a connection, a synonym, a root.
Each new encounter becomes
Hello, ciao, hola, salut!
With each language comes a new identity,
With each conversation, another me.
Taking risks and being overly emotive,
Yup, that’s speaking italian–
Laid back, always interjecting, and fiercely impassioned,
That would be me in spanish.
Reserved, sophisticated, and definitely more pessimistic
That would be french.
And finally, the most monotonous language of them all—
Wordy, and without a doubt, more awkward,
That’s when I’m speaking english.
So, who am I, really—
An imposter, a fake?
In any case,
The beauty of it is that no one knows
My real accent, my nationality—
Everywhere I go,
I have my own personal Google Translate,
Whoever I talk to,
I can speak to them,
Linguistically ambiguous,
Immersing myself in different cultures
Just as I please.

lramirez8796