A Travelogue to The Western Golden Mountain: an Experimental Prose
- Kiara Aggarwal
- Aug 1
- 3 min read
By Alin Sengjaroen
Is the deterioration of your tongue English’s fault or your own?
Mother speaks a language familiar to your ears yet foreign to your tongue. You cut your lips trying to find words that perfectly string into “I miss home” – the sentence which
occasionally slips out of your sinful mouth when your feet are covered in familiar dirt. She
smiles out of concern and you can only answer dismissively – not out of fear of Mother, but rather of the inability to understand your un-English self.
The betrayal started when you introduced yourself as maybe John or Olivia and laughed with hands covering your mouth to your new group of schoolmates. You smiled for the excitement of tomorrow’s sun, or was it because of the grilled sausage stick in your hands? One of the boys elbowed your waist and you found yourself stuttering to find the right response. It wasn’t the first time they’d tease you. Even the stars in the western sky would’ve known the ___ equivalent of the word stop.
Or during the big spring clean (since when did you start referring to seasons?) when the dust gathered in the English lettering of hardcover books scattered, you thought of the PM 2.5 dust you’d regularly breathe in every morning walk to your government public high school. You flip through every Fitzgerald novel you had and begin relieving your childhood passion for literature. The Shakespeare lexicons that were engraved into your mind. The several novels that won your heart over a chapter. You know, remember your favorite poem from Vern Rutsala? The one that goes:
We long for London mornings:
milk on the doorstep, papers by
seven, mail by eight-fifteen,
the reassurance of egg and egg cup,
the foggy assertions of tea—
And somehow you can imagine the sky from Liverpool and the smell of the Brighton beach’s salty breeze or even the English men walking on and about in the streets of Manchester and the overwhelming rain at Cardiff, completely missing the title of the poem being ‘An American Morning.’ You find yourself saying “I miss home” within your own home. After all, you were the first person in your current family to have stepped foot in English soil. The first and possibly the only. Your family convinces you that it’s for the better.
Oh, but you were never fond of literature classes, weren’t you? Who was that golden poet of your land again? You shrugged it off. That’s not your poet. You could never understand the poets, at least the non-English ones.
And (thankfully) soon, your vacation’s over. You return to the airport. Certainly, you won’t
miss the heat here nor will you think to train back your spice tolerance. Your relatives hugged you and whispered safe flights in each of their dialects (You don’t understand why they keep trying). Their calloused hands hold yours like fragile glassware blown in Czech Republic or Italy (Maybe you’ll go there instead of returning here next time) as they cheer on praying for you in Sanskrit. You held the gifted basket of ‘exotic’ fruits close to your chest, knowing that they’ll end up rotting in your room regardless. A smile slipped out of relief.
–
At Brighton beach, you walked around the shore with your blue-eyed friends. Everyone
shouted your names with a loud cheer: Welcome home, John / Olivia / Noah / Oliver / Charlotte / Emma / Hannah / Chris / Sarah / Megan!
A crunched Dr. Pepper can in your hands. They didn’t have this back then. You missed this.
“You’ve gotten tanner over the summer, have you noticed?” said Jessica as she elbowed you
in the waist.
“Oh, stop it,” you replied, fixing your golden wig.
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