day 262 || listening to spanish

Downstairs Ricky talks to his parents on the phone. They live in Puerto Rico and only speak Spanish—the familial conversations come across as musical intonations to my ears—I never could learn a second language. Lack of discipline or a strange form of stage fright I suppose. At a short distance the ebb and flow of Ricky's words seem birdsong, nonsensical phrases with a rare noun emerging to my recogniction: ojos, arbol, ventura, cocina. The remainder of his words flood over, lost phrases, secret constructions of constanants and vowels, masculine and feminine nouns—