Sepharad's Daughter, Wandering

You slipped me family keys — a jangling ring of names and stories over

teacups, the polishing cloth, your photo albums stacked in the closet. You

have never been to Spain but call it Espagne despite your passport, your

New York address, your children’s speech studded with gargles of Yiddish.

Ladino — our family’s ancestral house key, passed, like Jewishness through

your mother, then lost in the stickball streets below the 7 train. Ladino —

our sputtering candle in the closet. Your nomad grandchild paces the

world with a rough-sketched map of our once-lands, a visitor in every

tongue. What does it mean when your mother’s tongue goes silent in the

mouths of your children? What is home, if not the place where your

language is spoken?