Tomas, proud and terrified, stood tall. "A reply. To your words. About thinking of me when you close the books."
Tomas, meanwhile, spoke only Czech and a broken, self-taught English he’d learned from subtitled VHS tapes.
"Google Translate," she said slowly, "is a terrible thing. It breaks meaning. It shreds poetry. It makes people say they want to be lost bookmarks ."
She closed the notebook. She looked at Tomas—his frayed sweater, his hopeful, doomed eyes.
It looked… fine. A bit stiff. But fine.