Afterwards, he’d been dragged through the woods. A short slice of a knife took out his tongue.
At home, his ma did not understand. How could he not speak? She put it down to typical teenage sulking. How could a lad lose his tongue, after all?
He had nightmares after. Flashbacks to the ordeal. He became a fussy eater, a slow-to-speaker. The tongueless one.
How odd when two tongues grew a week later! A left and right. He looked like a lizard he’d seen in Tenerife.
His left tongue, like his left foot, was strongest. When he sang, he sounded like a nightingale in the woods – a sad and beautiful song, a choral note.
Best on matchdays, singing long ago, we faced the foe – the loudest voice in the crowd.
By Monday morning’s English class, his teacher praised:
“You sound like a poet now” as she raised his grades.
Ah, but what of his other tongue? At first, his right tongue was a stub – fit only for slurping soup. It grew with him: slow as a slug.
One day, it did speak. It said the name of the man up the stair who’d cut his tongue after …
He’s stayed silent since.