In Krakow, under the mutual agreement of cobblestones and centuries, I stopped for lunch because hunger, like history, does not wait for proper context.
A restaurant offering pierogi seemed more convincing than the Hard Rock Cafe, which had installed itself with great confidence in the wrong century.
A young woman greeted me.
Blond hair, a practiced smile, the unmistakable economy of someone who has already lived this day once before.
We spoke.
Nothing of consequence— which is to say, everything necessary.
And then the thought arrived with equal parts whimsy and angst:
why are our lives intersecting here?
She will remain— serving, walking, returning, knowing which streets curve and where to her laundry.
I will leave— to my kitchen, my coffee, my purple toothbrush, which performs its duties faithfully without ever asking where it is in the world.
Meanwhile—
each of us continues as the center of a system no telescope has fully mapped:
families in orbit, memories in storage, songs that arrive unannounced, conversations that replay with slight editorial improvements.
Entire infrastructures built without engineers.
Whole histories proceeding without witnesses.
We sit across from one another for less than an hour— long enough to exchange currency, not long enough to exchange lives.
She brings the food. I thank her.
This is recorded nowhere.
And yet—
somewhere in the vast accounting of everything that happens and is immediately forgotten,
our meeting persists as a minor, precise event—
like a crumb on a table, like a word almost remembered, like the brief and mutual illusion that we have interrupted each other’s lives.
Meanwhile, her life continues in all directions.
Mine does too.
Both of us, at intervals, certain of our centrality.
Both of us, entirely surrounded by things we will never know.
Despite the absence of any reliable signal— no drooping worthy of alarm, no crisping at the edges, no official declaration of thirst— the plant insists on requiring water at some precise and undisclosed moment.
Its leaves offer only minor adjustments, a change so slight it could be attributed to lighting, mood, or coincidence— the kind of evidence that refuses to testify.
And yet, water must be given.
Too early, and the roots object in silence. Too late, and the same silence deepens, as though agreement had been reached without my participation.
The purple one presents no difficulty. Six blooms at once, as if it had already reviewed the conditions of the room and signed without revision.
The pink one remains undecided. One bloom, paused indefinitely, neither withdrawn nor committed— a position I recognize.
There are, apparently, forms of life that do not improve under observation. This complicates matters.
My grandmother knew when to water them. Not through measurement, not by schedule, and certainly not by consulting the leaves for clarity. She stood near them, which was enough.
I stand near them with coffee. Again with afternoon tea.
The water disappears from the tray without acknowledgment or correction. No confirmation is issued.
The purple one continues, untroubled by my involvement.
The pink one— after a period of complete inaction, with no visible shift in circumstance— opens.
Nostalgia is slippery like a water snake. One deliberate squeeze and there it went.
Exit upon exit if you look at it. Look away, and beware it's return.
A mower hums somewhere beyond the houses, a duet of humming and bass, moving through the air because afternoons have always sounded this way.
A whisper of perfume passes— familiar, specific— caught for a second in the space between two steps.
A child runs ahead, hair lifting and falling across her forehead, light moving with it, time carried in the motion like once before with a different name.
The body looks at its wrist. What time is it— noon or 1987?
A recognition without language, already underway.
Memory follows in pieces.
You reach toward it— toward the full arrangement, the exact alignment of what it felt like to stand there.
Who you were. Who they were. Where, again? And, why?
Then without warning it arrives.
Complete. Immediate. Undivided.
Distance closes. The past takes its place inside the present, fully formed, in at least two of your senses.
Not because I need stronger reading glasses, though that may also be true.
Just small adjustments, little by little, the words end up on my nose.
Hello, words.
I tilt the page toward the window, hoping there’s something to borrow.
There isn’t.
I keep reading anyway.
It feels like I’ve stayed somewhere slightly longer than I was meant to, like a guest who hasn’t noticed everyone else has gone home.
I look up.
The room has already changed its mind— about me? About itself? The corners are gone. The floor is still there, I think.
I don’t remember the light leaving. I only notice that it has.
The book is still open in my hands. East of Eden, halfway through a sentence, continuing on without me, like a train speeding silently, and I am still on the platform.
I could turn on the lamp.
Way over there.
I try to read one more sentence, but I think I’ve lost the plot. Who is “dknfihd,” anyway?
Iris Lennox 