Pheasants on the Run

Life is a series of pinchings--soft, sweet, subtle, always harsh against our many skins. When I look back on the last year, I am flooded by the colors of such living. Undoubtedly, the turquoise of my first cafe; the yellow-brown of my first love's sad eyes; stubble, dark and gray against my lips; gray slate of Berlin; the open, cherry mouths of the infamous wall; bleeding Argentine hills; red-headed houses and hollow calves; headless chickens fleeing death.

And here, preparing for my move abroad, I am plump with apology, pent-up or purged from my every day with small attempts at smiling. What are apologies worth anyway? I expected to return from Wisconsin ready to make amends, to wrap my arms around him, say our sincere sorries and except. Yet my actions were silenced suddenly, the muted memories sentenced barriers between us. If I opened my mouth, no words would have exploded, my arms, no embrace would have told the full story that is waiting to be spoken. I am somewhat relieved that he is no longer mine and somehow in pieces, fully breathless at the very thought of the small world I have overrun.

I have only recently realized that we are gone.

To accept, then, has been my greatest goal. Over long breakfasts with childhood friends, hours-long phone calls, trail running, long walks across a city I am trying to claim again as my own, my own alone. It is only recently that I have embraced this reality, however sticky with dissent, however ill-fitting and uncertain, however cold against my chest.

Wisconsin, then, was a small retreat for me. Picking tomatoes and prickly cucumbers, to be drowned in pickling jars. The soft fur of Maggie the highlander calf. The pink underbelly of the golden dog. The ratted curls of my niece. The round, warm belly of my pregnant sister, an embodied grin of future. Coffee with maple syrup. An elf house discovered kayaking. Blueberry cake and homemade pizza, endless twizzlers and pop performance, hoppy kegs and elderberry wine, bubble baths and pheasants on the run.

What a racket there is in my head, when I am piecing together the past and the present, the possibilities that will die in the ticking moonlights, that pull at my indecision, my sudden inability to know what is right, to ascertain my nooks. I am holding onto each moment, not as if it is my last, but holding onto its every whispering of life, every touch and taste-an incorporation of these bent beings, of those I love. Perhaps there are last mentionings, last dances. And yet, I am so much less afraid than before. I know, we all dance again.

New Spaces

Rising at dawn reminds me of Kosovo and the same wild roosters that racket our own country. Sometimes I expect to look up at the quilted curtains, a reminder that the Mediterranean is only a stone's throw away. A reminder that the air, though thick with remorse, is fresh and focused, always cool enough to lull to sleep.

Here, we harvest vegetables and cook elaborate meals from fresh produce, zucchini bread, salads, roasts, the earth still fresh at our forks. One of my favorite parts of harvesting is the fact that I can just take a bite out of vegetables, sit gnawing on a cucumber only seconds ago pulled from the ground. This can be relaxing, the physicality mixed with the satisfaction of production, the startling beauty of purple potatoes and brandywine tomatoes an added sensation of warmth. Here I do not notice the smell of garlic on my hands or the dirt caked under my fingernails. I notice, instead, the soft red fur of a calf, the cry of a goat, the way the sun burns my temples even in the morning.

The music at the barn dance was wonderful and made me want to dance and dance. The taste of our ice-cream startling, the caramel dripped into small, frozen veins.

When I think about England, exiting the here and now for a moment, imagining the months to come, I panic. I panic, not because I don't want to go but because of what I am leaving behind. I panic because my heart hurts even here and while it can be calmed by a cup of coffee, laying down chicken feed, writing of other lives, running in the woods, it is restless and riddled. I am looking forward to my new place, space, where I will be focused on much that matters to me. Yet I am incredibly afraid of abandoning my own aftermath here.