I’m safely back at my hostel, sitting on the window ledge in the bar. It’s warm here, and there’s WiFi, and there’s a gentle yellow glow from the lights hanging from the ceiling. I can hear strains of familiar pop music on the radio that’s playing at the reception desk in the next room, and it’s strangely grounding.
“…she/is something to behold/elegant and bold…”
Soon I will be able to shower, to take off the boots, to sleep. Almost, but not yet.
I’m still wearing the boots I had on when I walked through the crematorium, through the streets of Auschwitz I.
“I’m burning up again, I’m burning up, and I…”
In Jewish tradition, it is traditional and symbolic to wash one’s hands after a funeral.
Here, I can rest my head against the windowpane, and it’s cold. It isn’t late in the evening, but it’s dark on the other side of the glass.
“I never should have told you/I never should have let you see inside/don’t want it troubling your mind/won’t you let it be…”
I can smell coffee brewing, the beads of sweat drying in the yellow scarf I found in Amsterdam.
Amsterdam. I needed to leave, to get away from all the weed. That’s where I found Anne’s diary.
I remember singing top 40 pop songs with my cousin from Germany and a meteorologist from Morocco in the back streets of Amsterdam in the rain. We came from three different places in the world, but we all knew the same melodies, and even some of the words.
“Just give me a reason, just a little bit’s enough, just a second we’re not broken just bent, and we can learn to love again…”
Top 40 pop songs are universal.
I remember talking to Morocco about calculus. I know where I’m at, with calculus, and she did too. She treated me like a little sister, tried to take me under her wing and tell me everything at once about traveling solo, because the beginning of my journey was the ending of hers. She was way better than me at foosball.
I walked her to the train station, and I held the door for her and I carried her bag, and I hugged her and told her to travel safe, and I will never see her again, and that was the best possible way to say goodbye.
“It’s in the stars/it’s been written in the stars of our hearts…”
The bar again. From far away, my real sister tells me about the five senses grounding exercise. “Brings you back to the present.”
I tried it and it worked.
“There’s only us/there’s only this/forget regret/or life is yours to miss…”
She pulled a Tarot card and told me that it said I would be enlightened by this experience and would be able to separate from this experience soon.
“No other road/no other way/no day but today…”