Real Americans

by Rachel Khong

Hearing a story—what did it accomplish? Nothing and everything.

The mother wore an expression of exhaustion that I remembered so well. She had surrendered: inviting the discomfort, not refusing it. Pain was easier to tolerate when you didn’t resist it.

I wondered if he could feel my grief, which ran through me like an electric current—like the tingling feeling that preceded tears.

I notice it now, my present: my grandson’s kind face, his warm hand in mine, and the smell and sensation—here the words, in any language, fail—of being alive.