I rode the train this morning, squeezed between the yammering conversation of two women and the blur of landscape colors rushing past the window. Their native tongue a key I earned not long ago, my own enigma code. Still, I bob in the dark sea. Then — a silver fish breaks the surface: someone speaking my other tongue. I turn. Not someone I know — but a face shaped by a long lost great-grandmother we may have shared. Two conversations, two rivers flowing beside me. Neither one

I like eating dinner for breakfast and breakfast for dinner. I like the smell of rain in the air. I like counting the gulps of water I...