Felpa de la oveja is my prize accomplishment of the week. This week that has dragged its cut feet like a limping goat away from the butcher. I’m ready to lob the head clean off, and use the meat to nourish the next week, or month, or year.

Felpa de la oveja. Plush of the sheep. All my cumulated efforts of hours and headaches amounts to naught more than a D on the Spanish test. After four more hours, I feel I have touched my toes into the cold brine of the ocean of language. After my toes are blue with frostbite, the warmth of English stings, my toes are so cold. So cold.

I watch others on the beach swim, body board, and surf with a grace that forgets them when they visit my beach. This darker beach burns my skin, freezes my toes, and blinds me. I realise my language is no beach, but more of an edifice constructed under four different companies, architects, and visions. It shades me from the sun, warms me from the cold, and illuminates the grains of the woods, the ink of the texts, and the oxygen of the air. I would rather read forever in my house than lay on that sinister beach.

The worst part is that there are Spanish majors in Spain, Mexico, South America. They adore their beach as much as I adore my house. They find the rooms too dim, too hot, too shady. I cannot please them as they cannot please me.

If only language were not such a communal divide.

Felpa de la oveja. Plush of the sheep.