Happy Accidents

Walking around a city alone is the same thing as going to the movies. The dark of the cinema, and the dark of this town, is the same dark. I know this only because I am up early enough every morning to see it. Drifting through the house, I tug a jacket around my shoulders and open the door. Pull my own hand down the stairs and out onto the street.

Like a smoke detector looking for a fire, I go walking. Past the houses, and the parks, and the supermarkets. Self-possessed, and loitering. Moving quick like a shadow or a figure ice skater. Turning every sharp corner. Not a girl, but a great white shark. Humming and reeling. Hurling up the hill with the gait of a New Yorker. One step, and then another, and then another.

I’m in Brussels now. The yellow streetlight singes the deep blue. Gauze hanging like a fog over the windows. If I’m lucky, when I look up, I can see it happening. The sky is shy for hours and hours, and then, for a flash, out with it. Sunrises like scarlet-faced confessions. Telling us how it really feels. An emotional light-show.

The streets, perfumed with cigarette smoke. Crows sit on the shoulders of statues, and the statues of angels sit on the tops of the buildings, watching over us. The people are talking, and I overhear them, but I don’t understand a word. I go in for handshakes, and get pulled into cheek-to-cheek air kisses. “The French way”, he says. Well, okay.

After work I call you up and talk to you. How nice it is to hear your voice. “What are you going to write about…” you say, “cobblestones?”. I laugh. Yeah. Something like that. Back in the Southern Hemisphere, where I’m from, it’s Summer. “It’s so hot over here”, you say. It’s true. It is. The dog is asleep on the linoleum in front of the air conditioner.

The washing machine in London turned half of my clothes blue. I rotate through what remains of my wardrobe like a cartoon character. I remember telling you this, and how you said, “…Maddy”, and how the laughter swung between us. You’re right, I should have separated the colours. It’s a catastrophe, but a beautiful one. A happy accident in the long list of happy accidents.

Happy accidents, like how I try to make breakfast and come back to a toaster whirring like a smoke machine at a high school disco. Happy accidents like the bruises that appear when I’m convinced I’m much better at dancing than I actually am. Happy accidents like falling asleep halfway through the TV show, and now all I can remember are waves crashing and Attenborough saying “blue whales have hearts as big as cars”.

Happy accidents like us. Like how I am here, and no matter how far apart we are, you are here too. These words put us in the same room. We’re together, if only for a second. You and me.

Originally published on World’s Greatest Internship here.