it's only january sixteenth and already my lists of things have spread from my calendar to my notebook to a piece of cardboard i found on the ground, and now they're begin to cross over one another so that all becomes illegible. in new york, a woman punched me in the street once, shrieking, "you're walking too slowly!" and yet i feel like i'm racing.
in germany, the shops close for the noon meal's mittagspause every day. they close by one o'clock on wednesday afternoons, for the midweek's rest, and they never open on sunday. in kosovo, we drank sweet caj with lemon every morning at eleven and and every evening at seven, the whole family along with our landlords, their children, and the grandparents.
my childhood meandered through three continents, speeding up only to catch trains as they pulled away from the station. but within a month of my eighteenth birthday, the second i stepped off a plane into new york city, the gun sounded. how can we live like this? finishing one sprint around the track only to turn around and run another?
we don't know when to stop, and i don't know how to end. is there ever an end? so many girls, their end is found in a man. others, they find their way back home. and i, i have nowhere to rest myself. i run from place to place, filling my pockets with new faces and losing them like children lose their teeth. there is no end in sight, only the eventual slowing of old age and toothlessness.
i will never have sweet caj in my garden of sunflowers and poppies in the morning and evening, invite the neighbours inside my gate, watch my grandchildren play.
"is there no great love, only tenderness?"
i know that i am racing, but toward what?
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