Undiscovere’d Countries

Maybe you found this on the ground; maybe a friend is showing it to you. Maybe it's straight-up yours. Who knows?

I’ve always wanted to be epistolary. You know this; I sent you that long, winding letter, back when—

Well, I remember your suit: threadbare, sprinkled with patches, and layering blue and black and brown. My own pantsuit wasn’t much better, but at least my brown came from the mud that slathered it when I knelt to give you the aforementioned letter. My bootcut trouser leg billowed out over the grass- and gum-stained sidewalk and your laughter ruffled my hair. I demanded to be taken seriously—well, the best I could, because I’ve always expressed myself better in the written word, anyway.

I’m writing today because I’m not capable of doing much else. I have one of those insipid hangovers where I’m not actually in any physical pain, but I’ve rattled about my day, clouded and fragile, much like a marble. I would just prefer a headache to be honest, if only to have something concrete to blame.

I’ve been thinking about our Europe trip. When we stayed in that apartment in the 2nd arrondissement, the corner of your mouth had quirked and your jaw shimmered and your eyes squinted as I threw the windows open and, defying the odds, mispronounced “Rue de Cléry.” I almost tossed you straight out of the window into the stale breeze, shocking the carefully-curated stubble clean off your face—luckily I occasionally stumble upon rich wells of patience and amiability.

I think you like to forget that I did all the pursuing early in our relationship. I defied gender dynamics, didn’t I? Remember the letter, the mud, my trousers, the stilted proclamation? I embarrassed myself, took the risk, had to get it all through your thick head, and now you repay me with these faces—over the cobblestones, over the wine, over the flickering underground Métro lights.

You’re lucky I depended on you to speak the French.

At least in Denmark, we were both just as clueless as the other (though the Danes spoke better English than both of us combined). The streets of København felt less like a labyrinth I was stuck in with you and more like a maze to escape together—then, later, we took a train to Helsingør.

The wind and the rain at the castle evoked a sort of purgatory, enough to make me forget my own idle (but outrageous) slings and arrows of a few days earlier. We stood, battered, against the stone walls of Kronborg Slot, stripped bare and whipped raw after weeks of travel and close-quarters. From the vantage point on the castle’s hill, we could see Sweden. It had no place on our itinerary, what with flying out of CPH the next day, but its coastline cut through the spitting rain all the same.

You looked a bit ridiculous, on that castle’s hill—you in your bright yellow raincoat, like the little girl on a box of salt. You’ve always been such a cliché, infuriatingly so, and that day was no different, with your wild hair pasting your forehead and blinking rainwater out of your eyes, which were of course the same odd, muddy green color as the strait, the Øresund.

Maybe we’ll go one day, I remember saying while looking at Sweden. I of course spent precious little time looking at where we were in that moment, at Elsinore, with its ghosts and cowards and sea of troubles. I could only look at you. Then, I complained about being cold.

You just quoted Hamlet back at me, the part about frailty and its name being woman, and I laughed. That first soliloquy always cracked me up, and you remembered this, way back from that class we took together in college.

And later that night, after hot showers with bizarre Scandinavian shower fixtures, we laid in bed together.

This is supposed to be a love letter, you know, in case it wasn’t clear. I kind of digressed all over the place—I tend to both wax and wane poetic, as you know—but I’m focusing now.

In that tiny bed in our boutique København Airbnb, while looking at the back of your head, I felt a pang for first time in a while. I’d been growing complacent and comfortable in the way the wind does before a hurricane or a toddler before a long sleep-tantrum. We’d both been insolent and horrible and I realized it was a calamity that I wasn’t looking at your Øresund-eyes at that very second.

Even after all the scorns, the whip-fast expressions, and the pride, the last thing I wanted to do was to sleep, to dream.

I didn’t take action then. I hope this little note adequately conveys my regrets. You intimidate and puzzle the Hell out of me, and I know everything is a give and take, and you really have a saint-like patience with me most of the time. I’d rather be stuck in this storm with you and the occasional heart-ache than be without.

I don’t want to be hypocritical. I’m not the most eloquent aloud. But let’s do away with the autopilot, the complacency, and just be again. Please—

xo

København/Copenhagen by me