1. roman noses. I don’t know, maybe because everybody just seems to love them. I always have.
  2. the nichts mehr gefällt mir’s that keep running through my mind, the inherent futility in that verse, in translating it at all, somehow always at the front of my mouth when I switch tongues.
  3. catching myself instead with these exceptionally american und’s and aber’s.
  4. the kettle of flies swirling in the kitchen each morning. how they dissipate when I wave my hand. how setting sugar cup traps just draws more but kills none.
  5. not every language lets you speak of love so easily. sometimes it’s just pleasing. some things you just enjoy, that’s all.
  6. but what if my joy knows no bounds? what if I suffocate it with indirects and passives and find myself drunk and weeping on a park bench somewhere because us yankees can’t live holding back like that at every turn, dammit. 
  7. repression has its place and maybe I do love the sun on the balcony, love this light, love the thick air trapped in this stuffy old room, maybe it’s not a matter of feeling good at all.
  8. I didn’t realize birdsong sounded exactly the same everywhere.
  9. or that all old buildings smell the same. I wake up and for a moment every morning breathe in and think my father is downstairs. I think it’s the room where I stuffed towels in the crack under the door, and where the dogs just snapped sometimes and tore one of the chickens to bits outside my window. what I mean is, I wake up waiting for the screeching.