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Today, I am between worlds. My feet touch South Korean tiles, but my mind lingers somewhere above the Pacific, fragmented like the in-flight map’s pixelated path.

A woman walks toward me, her face bright, a thin sheen of nerves glinting under her smile. I don’t know her. The closeness in her gaze feels not her own, like something left behind in a seat pocket. She holds out her phone— an illuminated bridge between us.

Her message tells me she is leaving for California, that she needs to know what to expect. It’s where I was born, but she doesn’t know that. There is no way she could. I guess I look American.

I nod. How strange, this transaction: two lives stitched together by a digital keyboard, its quiet tapping louder than our voices could be. She types her questions quickly, deliberately, pausing only to look at me, her head tilted like a bird considering flight.

When my turn comes, I answer carefully, my thumb hesitant over the glass. Is this app faithful to my words? Or is it reshaping them, pulling threads of meaning that unravel as they travel? Some words, I think, must dissolve entirely, lost in the space where one language cannot hold another.

I watch her face for signs of comprehension. Her nod feels genuine, but is it? How much of me does she really receive? Each answer feels both mine and not mine, a version of myself rendered in foreign syllables, a pale reflection on a dim screen.

She smiles, thanks me silently, bowing slightly before walking off, her phone still glowing. I think of her list of questions, typed so precisely, and wonder if I gave her enough, or if the machine stole too much. Then I wonder, were her questions a caricature of what they were meant to be?

Behind the glass walls of the terminal, a plane climbs. It is not mine, but I feel its leaving as if it were.

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