Before the end of a dream
Sitting on the bus about to leave for Stockholm.
Waiting for the bus, the night is dark, and the sudden bright lights make me think of winter mornings. It is the darkness and the waiting and the feeling of having just woken. My stomach knows I am about to leave. There is a cold breeze. I feel it in the holes in my shoes.
This is nothing at all like the platforms in bus stations in the U.S., which were hot from exhaust fumes and the press of summer.
I am very small. It shows in my eyes. Planning this made me large. This is not my first trip; it is not even the first time I’ve traveled alone.
A week ago I wanted this: to go to Helsinki. I knew exactly what I would do, what I would say. Now I am caught in motion: there is no staying in place; there is nothing to which I know I am returning. Only lumps of curdled milk and maggots in my belly.
The bus is dark except for two lamps besides mine. My thoughts run in parallel; and deep so that I do not know them.
It is easy to speak of little things—details and happenings—and then cut them with a sentence too big for words, something flapping and loose. Is this life?
Now there is only one light and mine. But we are in a tunnel lit as bright as day. There are orange lights for the speed limit and green lights for emergency exits. My ears lock up, I lift my pen, pinch my nose, and pop them.
We leave the tunnel and climb up on the bridge between Zealand and Scania. Denmark to Sweden. When I last came over this bridge, two and a half months ago, I looked towards the horizon and saw that the bridge didn’t go all the way. From where I first saw it, it just disappeared.
Every time I have returned to Helsinki I have felt like I was waking up from a dream.
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