Which came first? The egg
or the sperm.

The apple or the throat.
My throat closing

in on itself. Umma putting sweet yuja tea to my lips.
Saying, When the body is ill, the nectar drains first.

I speak having orphaned my mother
tongue. So of course I call her mother.

The purpose of the mouth is to echo. We call the palate a roof
for the silence of a collapsed house.

The body a vessel
for the world to pass through

disguised as sound. How come
my tongue dampens it

when I call back to the past?
The past is a world too, sharpness

declawed by time. Language
as a prosthetic.

Which came first, the meaning
or the moan.