#familiarity

She wonders what the atlas of her own self looks like, what hills and valleys the others are inking in their minds. Do they notice the way her hands shake on occasion, entirely without her direction, when the rate at which she’s deluged with new information becomes more than she can bear? Do they mark the times when she laughs as much as the times she sets her jaw and leaves the room to cry? Do they know what it feels like to miss a particular street corner, the smell of a high school, the texture of Afghanistan? She wonders and wonders what they make of her newness; she wonders if they know why she waits to ask.

But on the days when novelty isn’t a feckless din in her ears, when there’s calm she can access, and sweet, slow time, she glimpses their skill at cartography.  She feels the resonance of Nicky’s description of sailing beyond the sight of all land, like a bell has been struck inside her chest. And though Andy remembers the shock of the jungle with its wild, green heat, not desert and rock and dryness and sand, Nile knows that feeling of being far from home like a bile-sharp sensation at the back of her throat.