She keeps Hesse by her bedside, Camus on her desk and Bukowski in her memory. In a tiny small one bedroom apartment on the edges of a new city, she gathers ammunition and fortifies herself while inching towards a generational war.
She does not yield as she has time—the most formidable of opponents—on her side.
She dances with it to deem it irrelevant, a tender waltz around the sudden high-rises glimpsing of infinite opportunity. The systems in power no longer matter when the sheer will of the people is at play.
She apologies for being late, saying she often is, but it’s clearly because no clockhand can hold her from her natural sways.
“What do you feel like?”
She plays coy for a moment, but she knows exactly what’s being asked: In the other room, a bartender requires her emotions to better service her. Under an electric candlelight, she lays bare her desire for sweetness, warmth and care:
“Find me a way home.”
What is home, one wonders?
Home is the caress of difficult men and women who linger at Parisian cafes, with Hemingway telling their stories one song at a time. They exist in a fantasy we wish were ours—yet sometimes their tragedies are harsher than our realities.
Home is hummingbird on its back, darting towards eternity without the pollution of humanity. It exists only momentarily because every second introduces a new catastrophe.
Home is a pillow. A body. The longing of another. Home holds her tight when she sleeps, showers, makes a cup of coffee. She then remembers to breathe because time is on her side.
For her, home is tomorrow: A place with no regrets—
And no way back.