three

It's an unfamiliar yet strangely familiar sound, of knowing and not really know because you know you haven't been here long enough to know her secrets - but where have you been long enough to know? Words trip your tongue with an uneasy tilt to the vowels, you try but you don't really because you don't want to care, you were here three years and it has only been three months away (to go home) and you're back (is this your new home?) for barely three days and you are remembering what you have always known even though you never realized you had started to forget. When you were back people told you they found your newly acquired American accent annoying but the thing is people have been telling you that since you were eight so you just smile at them and care a little less. Here, right now, in this country, in this time zone, people look different look at you differently and you wonder if it is a good thing a better thing but you know better than to make comparisons because the grass is always greener on the other side (what other side the one that you are on, but what if you are on both sides?) and it just makes for unhappiness and resentful feelings that you know better than to commit to memory. But when you hear the accent (that accent) streak the air as a group of any-other asians leave the cafe you are reminded acutely of home, and that you really don't know where it is.