My tongue twists and contorts and words stumble from my lips without the approval of my ever-working mind - a jumble of the foreign languages that I have learned over the years. A dash of Korean; another of Afrikaans, a splodge of dusty French and a sprinkling of almost forgotten Hebrew. The taxi driver looks at me quizically and I clear my throat before repeating it, only in Korean this time around. He shakes his head in amusement and starts to drive.

I sink into the backseat, contemplating the outburst. I go over the words in my head first in Korean, then Afrikaans, then French, then Hebrew. I start trying to assemble my lingual knowledge, practicing numbers and phrases in my head, seeing how much of the Hebrew alphabet I can remember.
Thank You.
Gamsahamnida.
Dankie.
Merci.
Slicha? No, that's sorry.

I wrack my brain for the correct words, try to count up to ten. I might not be able to remember thank you in Hebrew, but I can only count to eight in French. My memory after huit becomes blurry, clouded by nege, gu and teisha. My head becomes a cloud of unspoken foreign phrases, running together, combining themselves until I don't trust myself to speak, worried that the words that will out of my mouth will be non-sensical jumblings, indistinguishable in any language, nevermind Korean. I close my eyes and close my mind to the mutterings, trying to focus on just one.

A conversation with the taxi driver is not in the cards. I don't trust myself to speak to him, am worried that I will come out of it looking stupid when in truth, I am overburdened with knowledge that wants to spill over at every opportunity.