I woke up this morning with the sudden, sickening awareness that I couldn't remember which side of my body my heart was on. The realization paralyzed me briefly, and I stared at the blue curtains pulled tight across de-molding towels and pajama pants, at the magnetic monkey and frog clinging to each other and to the doorknob, as I wildly tried to think, to remember. I wanted to put my hand to my chest and feel, but my hand wouldn't move, so I had to lay there, on my back, as quietly as I could and listen. My chest was strangely silent. The room, too, was strangely silent; it had rained all night and the combination of the pounding on the tin roof, the rumbling of the fan switching on and off with the power outages, and the gurgling of the roosters' strangled crows made the sudden silence feel especially alien. In the distance, a ship's horn blew a long low note across the bay. My heart fluttered, skipped, and began again.

I'm sitting outside the police station, having just been fingerprinted for the second time. Every finger - twice - plus the palm and the print of all four non-thumb fingers together, like a stamp, at the bottom. It's standard procedure for foreign residents. I'm sitting out by the drainage canals, writing this by hand, peeling a salak, and tossing the peels into the canal by my feet. My shoes are off, but from a distance, even the distance from my eyes to my feet without my contact lenses, it looks like I'm wearing white flip flops. My tan lines are that deeply etched by now, or is it the lines of dirt? A skinny black and white cat comes wandering through the outdoor hallways. I am still quashing my urge to unconditionally love every cat that I see, to rush them and scratch their necks. Cats aren't like that here. They're not treated like that. A cat wouldn't know what to do with my hand other than bite it.