He flew to Europe to pick me up.
I had already crossed it alone.
By the time he picked me up in Spain,
I had already crossed Europe by train.
In Florence, men whistled at me.
At the station I turned around,
got back on the next train,
and kept going.
In Venice,
he had booked me into a hotel on the canal,
gondolas knotted together across from the lobby.
I ate spaghetti vongole in the backstreets,
bought a mask,
and tried on another version of myself.
In Budapest,
I soaked in the bathhouses
until I ran out of money.
I called him in Hong Kong,
told him he had to buy my Harley.
He sent the money.
The bike stayed in my name.
In Vienna,
there were palaces and music.
In Portugal,
I sat on cliffs above the Atlantic.
The air was salty.
I knew I wasn’t leaving him.
I knew he would come.
I knew he was mine,
and I would be his.
He flew into Madrid.
I waited for him at the airport.
We rented a car,
a Smart ForFour,
and drove south.
Ronda.
Granada.
Seville.
Nude photos by the hotel pool.
He still displays them in his office.
And in our bedroom.
In Spain,
I went into emergency care.
My body was folding from pain.
The IUCD we placed in Hong Kong had to be removed.
That night,
we sat at the bar
and planned our family,
two girls,
two boys.
We even named them.
The names changed later,
but the family began there.
We drank sherry in Jerez.
Ate tapas in Cádiz.
Flew home from Barcelona.
Years later,
we moved our family from Hong Kong to Portugal.
Lisbon first.
Then Porto.
Seven years now.
The air cleaner.
The life slower.
The city we grew up in no longer ours.
And lately,
I feel France again.
Not as memory,
but as pull.
France is calling me.
Biarritz, maybe.
The edge where land meets sea.
Where it all began.
When he picked me up in Spain,
I knew he was orbiting me.
And I was pulling him closer.
Two weeks later, in Hong Kong,
we did the Landmark Forum together.
But that’s another story.
Paris and Andalusia belong to the same passage of my life.
In Paris, I left him.
In Andalusia, he came to meet me.
Between Paris and Seville I spent a month alone, crossing a continent.
Alone for the first time since adolescence.
He thought he was coming to get me.
I knew he was arriving to orbit me.
