dear England, you changed me

after years spent trying to be accepted in the UK, I now am not enough of one thing to belong anywhere

Do you know I studied your language for thirteen years? Obligatory English classes that you would think taught me something. Well, wrong. I stepped onto London’s soil, and not a word came to me.

Maybe you could relate to this feeling, after all, you step onto Spanish land every summer for a holiday with the lads. But you don’t. Because your entitlement allows you to speak English in a land that does not know your language. You drown yourself in their alcohol, piss in their fountains and mock their lingo. While in ‘your land’ I down pint after pint to build up the confidence to out words I heard you speak.

You point your knife at my foreign words, you force me to jump into a sea of unknown and build a raft out of the sticks I had. You cornered me, laughed at the Hs I inhaled when there were none, pointed your finger at the Rs I rolled and ridiculed my hand gestures. You shamed my origins out of my words. No matter how hard I would hide my heritage, you would find me and parade how I could never be part of ‘your country’.

What country? Who really belongs on this land? You made it your home, so why can’t I?

Layers of freshly dug-up soil buried my accent. ‘Your soil’, on which you stomped and stomped with your now made-in-Asia boots. I bet you felt just like your ancestors stomping on human faces. Drunk on power and privilege. You frightened me to seek acceptance by your kind to then cover me in a bomber jacket and tell me I could call this land home too. You poisoned me with a brew made out of leaves you stole. You held me down and fed me food from my homeland which recipes you had butchered.

I hid from those whose origins I had in common like they were infectious. You made sure I learnt how your country pronounces my name so that it could only betray me when spelt. Even fewer of you could know where I was really from, now. However, no matter how hard I tried to camouflage, nothing would split the crowd around me like the red sea as the squeak that comes out of your mouth every time one of you discovers I wasn’t born on your land.

‘Italian?? - but you don’t sound Italian!’.

How dare I mask my identity to you by learning how to properly speak your language? How unfair to you that you cannot tell where I am from by the way I talk, you must know. You must know if I am one of yours or one of them. I hid behind Queen’s English and East London slang. You trusted me. But now that you know it was all a play, I am your enemy. I see it in the way your teeth grin at my olive skin.

Kat Lyons, Grotto, 2021

I travel to no man’s land and cannot answer the question ‘Where are you from?’ Where am I really from? Have you moulded me enough into your culture that I can honestly say that’s where I belong? Or is this my chance to break free from your ties and embrace my roots?

You must be happy now that I don’t belong in my homeland either. I walk into galleries and my eyes turn to the English descriptions rather than the ones in Italian. The grammar of this language, once mine, has now left me. I feel illiterate in a country whose words were once all I had to express myself with, you could never understand.

My body lives through the intensity of a loving touch and I have to scrape for words that ask for more because my thoughts still speak your language. I am now also you. I cannot fight you anymore. I just have to find comfort in knowing that you would rage at the sight of my now-tanned skin.

This week’s one was a little bit different, but let me know if you enjoyed it. It felt liberating to write more metaphorically than usual, so I’d like to do it for other pieces.

Thank you for reading!

See you next week,

Giorgia xx