In Our House, We Speak in Hybrid Tongues

8:03 p.m.

Matthew Baker’s Hybrid Creatures is a short story collection about connection, about the ways we do and do not communicate, about the usage and necessity for alternative expression.

I am currently listening to the sound Matthew Baker’s keys make as he types. Maybe he is writing a story, maybe he is emailing. I cannot be certain. Occasionally, we glance at each other. Our faces are distorted by the smudges in our respective lenses. He does not know I’m writing this.

I live with him. When we speak to one another, it is in a hybrid of languages we know to varying degrees—English, French, Spanish and Japanese—but right now we sit in silence. Tonight, we are sharing the same physical space but not speaking. We’re silent in the: “For me, there [is] something very powerful about the experience. Some days this [is] my ‘reason for living.’ Just spending time together, quietly, in the same room. </html>”