Path With a Heart

She said she had arrived here, in this place, in this small town because of the night. The woman is small and tight lipped and precise, and locks herself behind her own doors. She edits her own life. But I want to prise open the doors, find her keys, see those lips soften. I sit across her table after she’s found her keys unlocked the door and let me in. I sit with a straight back matching her body language. Our sentences are choppy. I’m hesitant looking for the right words, feeling the need to be precise, exact, to the point.

But inside I’m a bubbling brook, spilling all over the place. My curiosity is running into the crevasses. I want to slouch, I want to lean in I want to ask . . . so I ask . . . How did you get here? What brought you here? Things stop, as if some rehearsed orbit has been halted. No answer. Did she hear? Her eyes are bright, waiting for her voice to catch up with her mind. I hear the train whistle, magpies warble a dog bark, and I do lean in, my elbows on the table.

The night she says. I was visiting someone here once and I wandered outside at night to look at the stars. When I looked at the night sky, I decided I would move here. Mouth soft now, speechless, no more to say . . . and I think of plans and paths, decisions and directions and how I said to Ophelia ‘you’re a star’ and she said back to me with a huge beam . . . Nanna you are the moon. How doany of us get here?