Page 100 of We Were Eternal Once

I was unprepared.

I break free from my box and gather my grave dirt and journey into the city. I go to the square, to the center of life in the city.

And I hate it.

The lights are too bright, the sounds too loud. The stores on the corner have t-shirts that say “I NEW YORK” and keychains and snow globes and every item you could think of. Réka would hate this. She’d call it “capitalist crap,” the “enshittification of life.” She’d write a poem about it.

Réka is thousands of miles away and hopefully in the arms of another woman.

I find a bar to sit in and consider my next move. An old couple sits in a booth, their hands clasped together over the table. The old man runs his thumb along the top of the woman’s hand. They sit like that for almost an hour without speaking, their silence the comfort of time.

“What can I get you?” asks the man behind the bar. I don’t understand his accent at first, and I squint at him.

“What can I get you?” he repeats, slower this time.

“I will take whiskey,” I say.

He pours me a glass and I turn it over in my hands.

“You working on your nursing degree?” the bartender asks.

“My what?”

He nods to my drink. “You’re nursing it. Drink it or don’t, it don’t offend me.”

“Where are you from?” I ask.

“Where are you from?”

“A place that no longer exists,” I say.

“Soviet Union?” he asks.

“Older,” I say.

“Hmm. Well, I’m from Mississippi.”

“What is it like there?”

“Hot. Humid. Rural. Nothing for a city girl.”

I left for Mississippi the next evening.

It is hard to travel America. There are few trains once I leave New York City. There are buses, but I cannot trust they run on time. To take the aeroplane you need proof you are a person, so I find someone who looks like me and take her proof. I could get in my box again, but I am not confident I can survive another trip like that, no matter how short.

Mississippi is like the world before I buried myself. It is open spaces, big fields, buzzing insects. I find a home with wheels in a park and coerce those living there to teach me to drive a car.

I drive south and stop in a town on the water. The humidity here fogs my windshield and keeps my hair damp long after I’ve showered. The windows sweat, even at night. Flies and mosquitoes buzz in droves over trash and people alike.

I find a bar and sit in the corner. Here they notice if you are drinking or not, and they want to ask you about it. I have to compel them away each time so I might exist and listen.

A boy climbs onto a chair in the corner and pulls a microphone to his face. The boy wipes a line of sweat from his face and adjusts a guitar on his lap. Behind him is a piano, where a man sits. I start to leave, because I cannot hear a piano without thinking of you.

Then the boy begins to strum and the piano plays and he sings and it is nothing like your music.

The crowd hoots and hollers. They slap their legs. Some get up to dance, either alone or in pairs. The boy smiles and rocks in his chair as he plays.

They sing three songs before they are replaced by another group, this time of three. Two have shiny instruments I do not know, one sits at the piano. When they bring the instruments to their lips, the sound is unlike anything I’ve ever heard. The man at the piano sings, his fingers dancing over the keys.