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I almost kept this in my notebook.

It would’ve belonged only to me if it had remained there.

Now it belongs to the space between us.
Perhaps you’ll discover in these words

What I couldn’t have found alone.

Before I begin, I should probably tell you what this piece is not.

It isn’t an argument against English.

If anything, it’s a quiet thank you.

English is the language that introduced me to books that rearranged something’s inside me. It’s the language through which I’ve met people I’ll probably never shake hands with, yet somehow know intimately through their words. Without English, this page wouldn’t exist.

So if English is your first language, you might not immediately recognize what I’m trying to describe. Because you’ve spent your entire life breathing the air I’ve spent mine learning to breathe. English is simply where my story begins.

I envy people whose thoughts seem to become words without getting lost on the way. You ask them a question and somehow the answer is already waiting. Every sentence knows where it’s going before it’s even spoken. There are no awkward pauses. No reaching for the right word. It all flows with the kind of ease that makes language look effortless.

I’ve watched people like that for years. Sometimes with admiration. Sometimes with envy.

For a long time, I thought the difference between us was fluency.

So I studied.

I memorized new words. I paid attention to grammar. I listened carefully to people who spoke with ease. Somewhere in my mind, I believed there would come a day when English would finally feel like home.

Instead, something stranger happened.

The more English I learned, the less it seemed to fit inside my head. That sounds ridiculous, even to me.

I discovered that my mind doesn’t experience the world in finished sentences.

Sometimes an idea arrives the way the ocean does. You don’t understand it immediately. You just know you’re standing before something larger than yourself., aware that you’ve encountered something too large to take in all at once.

That’s what certain thoughts feel like.

Whole.

Living.

Almost impossible to separate into neat little words.

Then I try to speak.

And something curious happens.

The thought becomes smaller.

Not wrong.

Just… smaller.

As though language wants every idea to fold itself.

Maybe that’s why I’ve always had such a complicated relationship with words.

Words seem to like certainty.

My mind has never trusted it.

A dictionary asks every word to point to one thing but my imagination keeps pointing to five.

When someone says, “It’s raining,” I understand exactly what they mean.

But that’s never the first thing I see. Sometimes I see the sky returning borrowed water. Sometimes I see clouds becoming generous.

Sometimes it feels as though the earth and the heavens are remembering an old promise they made to one another long before any of us arrived.

None of those are definitions.

They’re simply closer to the experience.

The dictionary tells me what rain is. My imagination tells me what rain feels like. And somewhere I live between those two things.

I’ve started noticing this everywhere.

A tree isn’t just a tree. It’s the earth practicing hope. The wind isn’t invisible air. It’s movement becoming visible through leaves.

Silence isn’t quiet. It’s a sentence that hasn’t decided what shape it wants to take.

Children, interestingly, don’t seem to have this problem.

Before someone teaches them the proper word for something, they invent one.

The moon becomes the night’s lamp. Thunder becomes the sky arguing. The stars become tiny holes where heaven forgot to finish painting.

Adults smile.

“That’s not what it’s called,” we tell them.

Maybe we’re right.

But I’ve begun wondering whether children lose something the moment every mystery receives its official name.

Maybe our first language isn’t English.

Or Yoruba.

Or French.

Or Mandarin.

Maybe our first language is wonder.

And every spoken language is simply an attempt to translate it.

That thought has stayed with me for the longest.

It might also explain why I’ve always wanted to learn other languages.

People often assume it’s because I enjoy cultures.

I do. But I think the reason goes deeper.

I’ve secretly hoped that somewhere in the world another language has already found words for experiences mine keeps stumbling over.

Maybe someone, centuries ago, felt exactly what I feel now and quietly built a word around it. Maybe another people discovered a way of speaking that leaves more room for mystery than certainty.

Maybe every language illuminates a different corner of being alive.

And then another possibility occurred to me.

What if I’m asking language to do something it was never designed to do? Perhaps words were never meant to contain our experience. Only to point toward it.

I’ve spent years wishing I spoke more fluently.

Lately, I’ve found myself wishing for something else instead. I want to remain faithful to the way I actually experience the world.

So I’ve made a quiet promise to myself.

I’ll continue speaking English.

But I’ll translate it through my own eyes.

If I tell you it’s raining, somewhere inside me I’ll still be thinking that the sky is pouring itself back into the earth.

If I tell you the sun is rising, I’ll also be thinking that darkness has decided to make room again.

If I tell you I miss someone, what I really mean is that love has continued speaking even after presence is quiet.

When I say “goodbye,” I will remember that two lives are carrying one conversation in different directions.

Perhaps this is the language I’ve been looking for all along.

Not a language with different grammar.

A language that refuses to let familiar words become finished ones.

Maybe that’s what writing has always been. Not the search for bigger words. But the refusal to stop seeing.

So if you’ve ever found yourself pausing in the middle of a sentence because what you felt was somehow larger than anything you could possibly say…

Then maybe this wasn’t my observation after all.

Maybe there are places inside you that language has been trying to reach your whole life.

And maybe every time we write, we’re not searching for better words.

We’re simply trying to make the distance between our inner world and everyone else’s a little smaller.