she—being an older co-worker and liable to spouting unsolicited motherhoods—told me, without a trace of irony, that one always remembers the road that leads one back to the important places. she was also picking up something from the cleaners late this afternoon. she had with her her teenage daughter who was stunningly fat. the daughter was cradling their equally rotund brindled cat in this satchel. the cat purred loudly throughout our conversation.
what was it i said? we never talked about going home to the old country. do i really present as someone who resolutely refuse to be happy or completely unhoused in her so-called realities of life? and just one road? and what are these important places? i am sweltering now while i walk back to my dank apartment. is this important? or was the time i was sweating in my new shirt under a jackfruit tree in my island hometown waiting in vain for someone i truly believed would come around that more significant?
as i neared my apartment building, a town car almost bumped into a little fiat the driver of which was maneuvering to parallel park. shouts were exchanged between drivers and then the two cars just moved on to where they were headed to in the first place. i remembered this utopian fiction i once read where they took down all traffic lights, ordered no such things as one-way streets and retired all traffic enforcers and a purposeful pandemonium, some sort of blissful disharmony prevailed.