there’s something crushing about knowing that somewhere deep in my mind, is a mother tongue that never got to fully grow. it’s the pain of knowing i have no true mother tongue because one was stunted and the other was started a little too late. it’s the devastation of knowing that korean feels like coming home, but can never be home the way english is. but english does not feel like home as much as it feels like a house that i happen to live in. i love you and 사랑해 are both as flimsy as the other and je t’aime and я тебя люблю will feel more real than either. it’s knowing i was raised within four languages and none of them are right. mandarin has wilted and died and molded within my mouth but i cannot bring myself to spit it out. spanish is rotting and twisting and i am forgetting and losing what i once had. english will never bear more than one fruit because it is not the first tree that was planted, but the first tree that was planted was burned and turned into a stump and maybe i am afraid it will never bloom again. maybe it hurts more knowing i am too american for korea and too korean for america and i left the only place in which it didn’t matter. maybe it hurts because i know one will have to give out in favor of the other, and i will never be able to say that i love my mother tongue because i do not. english is suffocating and exhausting and korean will never feel as real as english. korean will never be able to understand my devastation and my rot in the way that english does, and english will never bear the weight of respect and honor that korean does. neither will hold weight in love because they feel so empty. the only thing my tongues can agree on is that one day they will mold the way the third did and one day i will have to spit them all out.