So you tell me you love foreign languages. You say, Teach me a few phrases. Tell me what you just said. You want to understand me. You want what I think, even if it's gibberish or English, translated.

And what if it isn't what you want to hear? Would you continue to listen? Maybe that's why you want me to translate for you. At this moment, I am immeasurable. Mysterious, an unruly body of histories and stories (and maybe, maybe, lies) you could never really understand until now, translated.

Translated, I'm approachable. You could touch me. You could weigh me. You could catalogue my knowledge. You could claim that you aren't racist because you know me. You could even write a paper about how I/foreign/woman of color/child of refugees/ perceives the world.

You could finally measure how different I am from you.

Look, you've already done the translation.

You've been reading me all along. You've been reading something indelibly written on my body. Something that reads as outsider, foreign, alien, exotic, other. Something dangerous, something unknown, until translated, until I've filled in the gaps you've left me, until I've squeezed myself, gasping, into those empty spaces.

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