Forgotten and Remembered Words

From a piece I wrote on Mallorca (which keeps coming back to me), a meditation on the remembered and forgotten words of languages we've spoken once, in childhood or beyond, that live in us unheard or -seen until we find we've need of them again—

Like the colors of an old fresco under layers of newer paint, words of my seventh-grade Spanish begin to show spookily through the later layers of Italian, French. They come almost as soon as we land on Mallorca, as if they’ve been here waiting for me all this time, letting me know I’ve been a long time coming. It is a little unnerving to find them ready to pick up again where we left off. I have not spoken Spanish for more than thirty years, but it was the language I learned first and most comprehensively, subjunctive tenses and all, and here it is again—the words rising effortlessly to the surface, however patchily. Quizás, demasiado, Londres, izquierdo, estoy. Maybe, too much, London, left-hand, I am (if only temporarily). Have they been here all this time, I wonder? What doing, who talking to? What will they tell me?

image:  Christie B. Cochrell, Stone2, Stratford-upon-Avon