I sit on an aeroplane bound for Atlanta from Praha, sweet Praha. When shall I see Praha again? Well, I am banished for two years, so the minimum sentence of exile is at least obvious. My only connection is this small shittypie which accompanies me. The Smaller One was left dry eyed at the aeroport, receding as my footsteps took me towards gate B8. She worried for me. I was locked up as a result of my last attempt to fly from the country to my dreaded “homeland”.
As I listen to the voices (mostly the accents) sneak in between two tunes by The Church, I cringe psychologically. I am going back.
I spoke to her on the telephone mere minutes before departure. I sat in this slowly warming seat. I am still displaced in space, however. I attempt not to think of her return to the flat in Hůrka and the disturbing presence of ghosts she will feel throughout the next weeks, possibly longer. It is remindful of the insanity of Melanie leaving me in Austin in a flat filled with items we routinely shared. I recall doing my best to uncork the blackness and let it flood over me with intention that doing so might quench it. I don’t recall my results and the journal which holds them is long lost in a basement near Muenchen.
She’ll stare at the empty space in front of the range, imagining wisps of me coalescing and then fragmenting into swirls of smoke from the pan slightly charring topinky. I’ll be in two places at once. She’ll reach in her sleep with her paw to the space warmed strangely by the continuousness of my presence over the months but cooling ever so slightly evening after evening. Whether she awakes with the lack of touch or not, there will be a penetrating sting.
She’ll awake with longing.
And wherever I am, I’ll do much the same, but to cold sheets holding a vanished phantasm from a dream.
