Journal

It was 104 F that day. When the sun went down it was barely any cooler. We turn the ceiling fan on to its highest setting, its helicopter wind carrying the sound of my voice away. Without words, he touches my steaming skin. I struggle to find comfort in his hands, though I really want to. I have avoided his skin for weeks, only seeing the dark spots behind him. But here he stands in front of me, falcon’s wings spread out in swirls of hair over his heart, and I know what is real.

I struggle with Spanish. No, let me say it this way: Lucho con el español.

This can be a problem for me, as I live in Mexico and most people I know are Mexican.

I studied Spanish for years in school, but, until now, I hid my fluency in the pages of my textbooks. Any student knows there is very little to be learned from those 1000-page tomes. So now that I am enrolled in the Spanish of Hard Knocks, I tell myself this story: Learning a new language is hard.

This story bounces around in my head every time I go to open my mouth. It catches the words on my tongue and destroys me before I conjugate my first verb.

I am in a dark room. Doors are closed. Music is pumping but the room is silent outside of my earbuds. Alone, I am dancing to a song that makes me feel very sad, a little angry. I am turning my wrists and swiveling my hips. Kicking my legs and snapping my hair. I am being as dramatic as I possibly can be in this space. Dramatic here means I am less so on the outside.