A great many years ic alp. It began  in a linguistics book in faterest at first, ot I o do one  contained. tters and foreign ones. tal N’s t  ttle n’s and capital K’s t  ttle k’s. Otters, n’s and d’s and s’s and z’s, tle tails and loops attac’s. I loved t turned into j’s, and v’s t perciny o’s like performing dogs on balls at taug  ernational pic alp, I discovered, you could e  looked like mat looked like secret code,  looked like lost languages.

    I needed a lost language. One in . I used to e one special er’s name. A talisman. I folded to elaborate miniature origami, kept my pleat of paper alo me. In er it lived in my coat pocket; in summer it tickled my ankle inside t nigc in my  alrack of ts of paper. I lost tried to prize one from my fingers, I s to t  o read it. But tom of a dra, I did noto stop  name, o break, and o me, were full of sorrow.

    o speak but, raising my finger to my lips, I commanded   tried to s  ed to forget  tried to keep  to her now.

    I prized t a  t on t tasted its dry, ang, and sen years my parents rying to forget. Noect it in a silence of my own. And remember.

    Alongside my mispronunciation of een languages, and my ability to recite t for, random  over from my bookis only to amuse myself; its purpose in te, so as ticular effort to practice it. t is o paper to capture ts and fricatives, trills of Emmeline’s urgent tempts.

    After t on t my line of squiggles and symbols and signs. as it accurate? Doubts began to assail me. ely after my five-minute journey back into tion of tic alp itself adequate?  if my first failed attempts aminated my memory?

    I en on t again, urgently. aited for to tell me I  it rig ravestied transcription of somet was useless.

    I e t name instead. talisman.

    It ill alone.

    I screo a ball and kicked it into a corner.