I can't write poems in my mother tongue

On days
when I am most satisfied with my poetry,
I read it out to Ma.
Loud.
Stressing
the metaphors that were the hardest to find.
Each word
ringing with an echo of my pride.

I read it aloud
then
translate it to her
in my mother tongue.

There is something mystic about the way it holds me in its grip, warm.
How its rhythm and cadences
sing to me, slowly, the songs of home.
The way words fold themselves
and hide behind the nape of my neck,
fill my body till the brim of my throat
and roll perfectly with my tongue
as I speak my
मातृभाषा ।

Yet every time I hold my pen,
the flickering tongue of अग्नि,
the vastness of नभ,
the soft touch of चंदा

stretch thin
through my fingers,
changing shapes

like flames of a dying Fire.
like dark clouds in the Sky.
like the waning Moon

My tongue sits quietly behind my pursed lips
as if
grieving over a love unrequited.

I can't write poems in my mother tongue.