Popagandhi

for Danielle, who inspired (wander)lust, and taught me to ‘take your life, live it everywhere’

Every night for the last few, I would lead her back to her hotel with her hand in mine. The days began to pass increasingly quickly, feeding off the schedules and the rhythms of travellers. Hovering around backpackers has the tendency to make you forget all the tasks at hand, and so it was – I soon found myself gladly putting my life on hold to live out the last of the days I had with her. I had taken the package thrown my way and devoured it.

This morning, hours after she was gone, I discovered a strange aching for her, more than I thought I would. I also discovered ‘tourist’s blisters’ on the soles of my feet – the only physical remnants remaining of the.. what shall I call it? I don’t know. That might have upset me a week ago, but now I’m convinced it doesn’t matter what it’s called as long as we know it wasn’t merely an apparition.

Stealing a kiss from her in an Arab Street back lane, she found the streets and buildings quaint – all huddled together, she said, like those in her native San Francisco’s. What a tourist I had been, what a ride it was. A tourist through my city, exploring the streets I know well but whose accompanying emotions had been kept secret from me, until now.

Every night for the last few, I found myself circumnavigating my way around my city, with the clumsy eagerness of a new lover around an old city. What I didn’t know was that between the stolen kisses and the dread of the impending departure, she would manage to circumnavigate her way around my heart, well beyond its well-built defenses.

You will be remembered by long walks, bars, even longer walks; the kiss outlasting a seventy storey ascent, by how the moonlight illuminated the contours of your body through the blinds on a stolen night.

Notes
1. First posted 29 Jan. 2005.
2. Four Women preceded.
3. You are not allowed to snigger about moonlight and blinds.