Sometimes I think I love best sentences that point to the obvious and the ordinary. In my mother’s nomadic village in Eastern Tibet, we greet each other by asking, Ku whop jhi, “Is your body tired?”

The common response, even though fatigue is evident is, Ka ma thi, “No, I am not tired.” It is the unspoken we pay attention to. When we say it is raining, we say, “The sky is stepping down.” On its own, the rain is rain. The translations are not so beautiful. I came to love sentences from hearing and repeating simple ones that gestured to a world that was arresting, alive, and a little deceptive.

There are days when I fumble over simple words, even as I think in English, write in English and speak primarily in English. Perhaps it has something to do with the first two years of school when English was disparate sound I had to assemble like a puzzle. Perhaps it has to do with realizing that language has limitations and cannot encompass everything.