We are born into this world And told to speak To express ourselves To tell others of our needs To speak in your mother tongue That you learn so early on Growing comfortable in speech Talking to people on the daily Communicating like we were born to But when I speak it’s different It’s a nervous feeling using my mother tongue Having to speak to others Or anyone at all So nervous that when I speak my words twist And I stutter lots Having to see the sentence when speaking In order to not stutter In order to not stand out Over analyzing every word I said Every reaction they did to my words The words I try to not say The words I have a hard time saying The words I over analyze So much I plan out conversations To make sure I don’t mess up when speaking Trying to follow everything Yet it derails the instant the words come out of my mouth The birds in my stomach flying constantly They morphed from butterflies to birds Growing in size when I think of speaking Making my stomach turn and my hands tremble and my leg shake Making me on the verge of tears for speaking sometimes For trying to communicate Thinking of the people I talked to Years ago Months ago Weeks ago Days ago And thinking how it was bad Thinking of how I could have said something different That would make them like me more Thinking of how they reacted to my words Were they really interested or was it just awkward When I stutter and mess up my speech I’m not sure why my words twist And my stomach turns When I speak my mother tongue