I’ve always wondered at your ability to travel, to change places, to switch between time zones. One day you’re here, and on the other you’re already across the ocean. Your day has a double share of hours, and your life has a double measure.
I’ve also wondered where your things go, the things you leave behind each time you’re on the move again. I look around the room – it’s already bare, stripped of all your possessions. All old trifles uprooted, and all your traces eradicated.
Only the cinders in the fireplace are still alive, like a heart of this abandoned house.
“Will you come back?”
“Don’t know. I need some time to live there – to live away from *here*. Some change. A new path, maybe.”
“I hope you know where you’re walking.”
You shrug, sit down on the windowsill and gesture to me to approach. The wide window is open into a warm summer evening. The apartment is on the third floor. A white tulle curtain – perhaps you didn’t like it enough to pack – wavers in the breeze.
I stand beside you and watch the street below. Under the crowns of the trees, dusted green after the long heat, people are passing by – some trotting busily, some strolling, singles, couples, companies. They are too far below to hear what they say, but they are loud enough to make a presence.
I gaze down while your hands tug at my clothes, and when we touch, and when the silken tulle rubs against my bare shoulder. It’s making me slightly uncomfortable that we’re doing it here, on the windowsill, with your back leaning against the frame, but then my attention is diverted.
“What are you looking at?” You sit with your back to the window and can’t see what’s happening down in the street, but you can see the curious expression of my face.
“It’s a man. Must be a puppet-maker or something like that. Very old-fashioned.” I speak, all the while moving as I should, and you groan into my shoulder. “He was carrying a box, then he stumbled and the box fell down. You know what’s inside?”
You don’t, and I don’t think you care right now.
“Parts of puppets’ bodies. Right now he’s picking those artificial eyes from the pavement.”
I can see the man clearly because the street lanterns are already turned on. This makes me realize that we, too, are perfectly visible, in all our private indecency. I tell you about that, but your hand softly brushes my sweat-covered back.
“Don’t worry. They never look up.”