Thick Skin

Another cycle begins, she writes from the north, endless summer drawing impossibly to a close and everything beginning and ending all at once. I don’t know what to make of this life. I stand on the platform late, trains running rarely and the air thick with August, how was my skin so cold so recently? We sat in a restaurant in the midday heat, calculating dates and remembering times when everything was just beginning, it seems a lifetime ago, and I’m not sure anymore I remember who I was then. I tell him I’m better now, better every day and I know I mean it: for a short moment I forget the gashes across my lungs. A Hasidic man next to me takes off his large fur hat, a source of pride, a symbol of repression, I don’t know that any of us are as free as we like to believe.

Still, any moment breathing is better than not, this short moment before stepping onto the steaming platform is a gift and you swallow it whole. A train runs express in the depths, the workers blow a whistle and step off the electrified rails. The Hasidic man puts his hat back on. I smile despite myself, and it feels like this is the greatest gift: belief that everything may one day start anew. The train arrives, I make my way back home. Everything ends, I am still here.

I am here, again.