The Book of Salt

by Monique Truong

After years of the imposed invisibility of servitude, I am acutely aware when I am being watched, a sensitivity born from absence, a grain of salt on the tongue of a man who has tasted only bitter.

When I first heard the weaver’s story, I was twenty years old and in love. I mean in love, painfully, involving every part of my body except for my head, in a way that I now suspect only a twenty-year-old man can be. Not so much a fever but a quake, a continuous tremor that made it difficult or just unnecessary to think. Talking was difficult as well. Speech was definitely one of the first things to go, as this sort of feeling can be better expressed in other ways.

I may be a fool, I think, but there is no need for me to look like one as well.

It is difficult to remain objective when I am alone in my memory.

He knew that the sickness would have to pass on its own, that sometimes the sound of a human voice is a steady raft on a lurching sea.