As a child

because my voice was not the right voice and could not be understood I stood before the mirror— a murky glassen word this mouth can’t shape right to this day — and was made to watch my teeth and lips being imprecise. So this is why I come across a Southron and not from Yorkshire, or Sri Lankan; but I’ll complain no more about this clarified and potent tongue for when the moustached gent at US Customs asked me in his hapless twang are you a terrorist, my borrowed posh it sure abashed that poor colonial; and it was of course what my child-face perceived or could not in the glass which made of me a scrutineer of sound, a listener for and into every glitch in the aathma, the script, the avid void of English.