‘The Age of Acquisition’

John Zheng's photobook, Mississippi Delta, is to be released in September 2025. He teaches at Mississippi Valley State University and has published hundreds of photographs or photoku in journals, including The Southern Quarterly, Arkansas Review, Under the Basho, and Integrite.

The Age of Acquisition

I was always fluent
in wanting more.

One language plus another
equals a self multiplied—
a voice that can speak to strangers
in their own tongue, that carries
the accent of home into rooms
where no one knows your first name.

I loved my home.
It had guava trees,
and a horse that knew my voice.
It had my father’s singing in the kitchen
and my mother’s stories at night.
I just wanted to see beyond the fences.

So I practiced, preparing
to greet the world
on its own terms,
in its own languages.
Out loud.
To a creature that would never leave that field—
and to a future I hadn’t met yet,
but already believed in.

In New York,
I bought my first pair of high heels—
stilettos, because I always aim high.
My boots had taken me this far—
but now I needed to speak taller.
To meet the sky
at eye level.

The age of acquisition never ends—
we are always eight years old
somewhere inside, whispering
new words to patient listeners.

Teaching ourselves to claim
the tongues of wider worlds,
to speak in the inherited dialects
of belief and belonging, while
learning the beautiful grammar
of inhabiting both.

Rebeka Goodman writes about fragile bodies, errant planets, and words that misbehave. She's a linguist by training, a poet by compulsion, and often mistaken for a constellation.