Audition

by Katie Kitamura

In some ways the part is only working if I lose sight of the shore. But at the same time, it’s important to be able to come out the other side, you have to be able to come up for air. Otherwise, you won’t survive.

I had the sense that I was still too much clinging to the shore. The part, the world of it, continued to elude me, and I knew that the window of opportunity was closing, that I had to make some shift within myself or the role would slip away.

She turned next to me, and I took her hand in mine—her skin smooth and her grip so light as to be an act of aggression, it left me with the sensation that I was holding on to nothing. She made it so that I was the one who was grasping, the one who was seeking more than was being given, and as I released her hand, I wondered what this evasive physicality boded for Xavier. Although it was possible that he experienced it not as evasion, but rather as a kind of yielding.