Most people make sense. They lead back to somewhere; hair that looks like theirs, eyes and vowels in their same shapes. The way they hold a fork. You see it and it’s like double vision swimming together, the colors all looking brighter and more real when they resolve.

Sometimes I feel like the child of ghosts.

People have always tried to fit me in somewhere. Racial ambiguity encourages strangers to guess my ethnicity in a game where the principle rule seems to be me not wanting to play. My students will insist that I must be related to my nearest brown colleague. I laugh; I know it’s nothing. But also, I wonder if they can all sense it. The broken edges, the empty space beyond them.

"Why do you say it like that?" someone asks, smile curving upwards under the question. But their brows dip, broadcasting the confusion. 

I don't know what to tell them.