how to translate the word: worth [Ellaina Powers] Hushed words in unfamiliar bedrooms have become the world’s spoken love language; we learn what each other tastes like instead of what our middle names are, how many freckles are on our thighs instead of how many siblings we have back at home, where we bruise the most, instead of all the places in which our feet have touched the earth. Their inflections and dialect are foreign, puzzles my brain can’t solve, but I’m treated like I’m native to it and belittled when I refuse to use that tongue, when I don’t let them shut and lock the door, when I go home early and don’t drink what’s in the cup. Sometimes I finish it just to see if I can find any connection at the bottom, if the alcohol in my system will make their greed taste any better. It never does. I’m alone in a room full of people swallowing each other down without chewing and I’m starving for something other than skin and sweat and latex. But nobody understands me when I ask, where’s the way out? They just watch and wait until I stumble into a dark corner wearing all of my clothes, dust collecting under my collar and worth deteriorating with every ignored glance, blaming my own loneliness on me because I won’t let them whisper foreign words in my ear. 11 PLAINS paradox