Intimacies

by Katie Kitamura

A place has a curious quality when you have only a partial understanding of its language, and in those early months the sensation was especially peculiar. At first I moved in a cloud of unknowing, the speech around me impenetrable, but it quickly grew less elusive as I began to understand single words and then phrases and now even snippets of conversation.

I had made myself too easy to leave, stashed away like a spare part, I had asked for too little, and now it was too late.

I could understand anything, under the right circumstances and for the right person. It was both a strength and a weakness.