This morning was an exceptionally early morning as I slowly and quietly logged out of bed and took a shower, getting ready. Seeing as I would be presenting within three hours, I dressed well with my fluffy pink shrug that has become symbolic of all meetings urgent. I got to park next to the station in an empty parking world and I was on the train before the sun was. The train was heaving, shoulder to shoulder with the usual novel-reading businessmen, and not for the first time my laptop clicked merrily along to the silent swoosh of the train.

And through it all, I didn’t really want to talk.

When I got to Waterloo it was a disaster area- masses of black overcoats and briefcase waiting quietly with their owners for the next tube. The sea of people made me constrict and release in exhaustion, and the thought that maybe I am not enjoying this crossed my mind yet again. The mass turns and faces me at once with the announcement that our beloved Waterloo and City line is broken (again) and so with a sigh I hiked my bag over my shoulder and turned to the long queue waiting for taxis.

My breath puffed out in front of me in the line and I wondered if this, at least, was a sign that I was here, that I was real. I didn’t speak and didn’t want to speak. People were plugged in, switched on, chatting to each other like the automatons we have become.

The cab pulled up and I opened the door, swinging into the seat and dropping my briefcase next to me in one motion.

‘Where to, luv?’ he asks, thick London accent waving at me from the front seat.

I gave him the address and sat back. I watched small rivulets of water drip their way down the window next to me. From time to time tiny snowflakes came and settled on the window before sacrificing themselves before my eyes. Notice me! See me! they scream, and I want to tell them: I do see you. It’s not all for nothing.

I caught my reflection in the window and wondered how it was that I looked so young. A curl at the back of my head bobbed in the reflection of the window, and when I looked my eyes were two dark burning spots in the window. I turn 31 in 5 weeks, and yet I looked so young and so frail.

And lost. And guarded. And lost.

I’m like vanilla ice cream on the dessert menu. The disappointing default you get to fall back on should your premier choices run out. Getting laughed at on the phone last night helped drive it home that I’m the melting choice on the dessert cart. I’m not so crazy, I just know it.

The cabbie looks at me in the rearview mirror. ‘Where you from, luv?’ he asks.

I’m used to this one. I don’t mind it. ‘The States.’ I reply.

‘Oh yeah?’ comes the somewhat interested reply. ‘Whereabouts? I went to Florida with the Missus last year.’

‘I’m from Texas.’ I reply. And my mother’s admonishment came into my ears: Sooner or later, you’re going to have to return home, even if this isn’t home for you anymore.

‘Texas, eh? Like Houston?’ he asks, shuttling his head to the left and looking at me in the mirror.

‘Dallas.’ I reply. ‘I’m from Dallas.’ Only I’m not, not really. Dallas has grown up without me and I have grown up from it. It signed my yearbook “2 Cool 2 Stay 4ever!” and it meant it.

I turn my head to the window and hope he understands that I don’t want to talk. I watch the water on the window and try to see through the water, condensation, I think. It warps and warbles the world and looking through the water gives everything a slightly smudged and blurred look, as though I have fingerprints on glasses or as though I am going through an eye test, telling them which looks clearer, number 1 or number 2. The world gets a rounded view that it doesn’t usually have, and I wonder if I would rather see it round or see it clearly.

‘Do you go home much?’ the cabbie asks, distracting me from my own kaleidoscope.

‘No.’ I say quietly. ‘I don’t.’

‘It’s a shame.’ He says. ‘I’ve never been to Dallas but I guess it would be nice, eh?’

Oh sure, it’s ok. If you like ghosts. If you like reminders that you are not a part of daily living.

I look out the window and think of the rough discussions that I had last night across the Atlantic. I think of the way I feel pretty punctured today, and I think those holes are where the words are seeping out. Things in my life are punctuated and obvious like veins of a leaf, and many of those veins are so stressful that I want to crumple the leaf in my hand and watch the fabric of the leaf fall, stripping it to the tendons.

We get to the building, and I badge my heart at the door and check my soul into the cloakroom, stuffing the receipt into the corner of my briefcase. I seat myself at an empty spot to log on, check that I have everything. I have to present soon. My presentation consists of two slides I did last week. I am glad of the brevity of my slides-it will allow me a frugality of words that I would otherwise appear rude over.

I just don’t want to talk. I pace the corners of my mind and come up with Rilke’s Panther, because all roads lead back to German poets.

His gaze has grown so tired from the bars
passing, it can’t hold anything anymore.
It is as if there were a thousand bars
and behind a thousand bars nothing.

I crush the leaf of my life beneath my heel and wish I hadn’t reached out and touched someone last night. I wish I had gone back to bed when I woke up yesterday morning. I wished I hadn’t seen the news and bought the paper yesterday which both contained a subject for tomorrow, a new version of Kafka scratching the sticky surface of my brain. I wish I could’ve stayed home today and had a bowl of soup and watched 24.

I wish I could see the bars, and in seeing them, see how to break out of them.

-H.