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Two Ways

November 30, 2019/ Antonia Angress

[creative nonfiction]

In Spanish, there are two ways to say I am. The first, Soy, which is what you say to introduce yourself, implies stability and permanence. It’s a verb that expresses not action but the kind of stasis inherent in the self’s immutability. Estoy, on the other hard, embodies transience and ephemerality. It’s used to express feelings. This too shall pass, it reminds you. When I taught Spanish, my students constantly confused the two. “Soy triste,” they’d tell me. I am sad, forever. “Estoy una persona.” I am a person, but only for a little while. Their mistakes were funny and sometimes beautiful. After class, I wrote down my favorites in the margins of my lesson planner, though I had no one to share them with.

*     *     *

In Spanish, there are also two ways to say I love you. There’s Te quiero, which, though it translates literally to I want you, has no sexual connotations. A more accurate translation would be I care for you. Or, as I once heard a reporter on the radio describe it, I little love you. Te quieros come and go, like most feelings. And then there’s Te amo: an expression of love-with-a-capital-L.

*     *     *

I said “Te amo” for the first time when I was fifteen, to a boy named Rubén. We’d exchanged Te quieros for a few months and one night he touched my face and said, “Te amo,” and when I said it back to him, I felt us ascend, together, not to some higher plane, but definitely to somewhere else. Since Rubén, all of my romantic relationships have been in English. It saddens me, sometimes, that English doesn’t allow for such subtleties, such nuances in the expression of love. Then, I wonder whether the ecstasy of that leap between Te quiero and Te amo was a figment of my youth. Is it that love is different in another language? Or that love at fifteen is worlds away from love at twenty-nine? I am second-guessing myself, forever.

Antonia Angress was born in Los Angeles and raised in San José, Costa Rica. Her work has appeared in Arts & Letters, 45th Parallel, plain china, and elsewhere. She was the winner of the 2019 Writers’ League of Texas Fiction Prize, and a finalist for the 2019 Breakout 8 Writers’ Prize and the 2018 William Faulkner- William Wisdom Creative Writing Competition for a novel-in-progress. She is also the recipient of the O’Dwyer Scholarship from the Community of Writers at Squaw Valley. She holds a BA from Brown University and is currently pursuing an MFA in fiction at the University of Minnesota, where she is a College of Liberal Arts Graduate Fellow. She lives with her husband in Minneapolis and is at work on a novel.

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Friday Lunch Blog

Friday Lunch! A serving of contemporary essays published the second Friday of every month.

Today’s course:

The Enduring Haunting of a Failed Driver’s Test(s)

September 15, 2023/in Blog / Meghan McGuire
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Glitch Wisdom

May 12, 2023/in Blog / KJ McCoy
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Lessons on Getting Paid: My First Year as a Freelance Writer

April 14, 2023/in Blog / EJ Saunders
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Midnight Snack

Take a bite out of these late night obsessions.

Tonight’s bites:

The Secret Histories of Everywhere

June 2, 2023/in Midnight Snack / Brian Lynn
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Into the Linguistic Rabbit Hole

May 5, 2023/in Midnight Snack / paparouna
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Dancing into Detachment

April 7, 2023/in Midnight Snack / Robert Kirwin
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Amuse-Bouche

Little bites every third Friday to whet your appetite!

Today’s plate:

Exercise

September 11, 2023/in Amuse-Bouche / Cecilia Savala
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LitDish: Ten Questions With Isabel Yap

September 1, 2023/in Amuse-Bouche / Interviewed by Gail Vannelli
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Pawing the Ground

July 23, 2023/in Amuse-Bouche / Laurie Granieri
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School Lunch

An occasional Wednesday series dishing up today’s best youth writers.

Today’s slice:

I’ve Stayed in the Front Yard

May 12, 2021/in School Lunch, School Lunch 2021 / Brendan Nurczyk
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A Communal Announcement

April 28, 2021/in School Lunch, School Lunch 2021 / Isabella Dail
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Seventeen

April 14, 2021/in School Lunch, School Lunch 2021 / Abigail E. Calimaran
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Word From the Editor

If you are an artist of any kind, chances are you are no stranger to The Unknown. In fact, it has probably been a motivating factor in creating your art. I know it has been for me. Wrestling with The Unknown is a fundamental part of the human experience, and the human experience is a fundamental part of art.

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