i don’t think a lot of friends know me that well

There are moments, fleeting as they are revealing, when I feel, almost viscerally, the limitations of language. I see it in the way someone responds to my words, or rather, to the shadow of them they have chosen to see. They smile, nod, and say “I get it,” but something in their eyes betrays a misalignment. I walk away from the exchange more invisible than before like the interaction has peeled away a layer I barely noticed myself wearing—a coat of my own camouflage. We can speak the same language and still understand one another so little that it borders on irony, like learning the rhythms of a song but missing the melody, knowing the dance moves but not the beats. It is as if I’m speaking from different languages stitched together by circumstance. I find myself rehearsing phrases, wondering if they’ll translate as I mean them, hoping that someone might catch the subtlety, the angle, the way the words catch light in my mind. It’s as if my true, raw and unvarnished language—exists in a

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• Abu Zar Talib