WOUND UP like a ticking clock, he wakes at 3am. Careless Whispers plays so loud he hears them sing into the next room. An omen among an ambush of torment that would break even a broken man. Familiar thoughts in a foreign land rush an invisible finish line. It’s strange how the truth tends to bend then breaks—his mind bends too. An ecology he’s almost learned to inhabit.

Unspoken words rifle through the half-open drawers of his brain, an inner voice locked and loaded, spills phrases beyond the safety of a bursting head. Tucking them in for now, he puts those damned rumours to bed but knows they’ll dance again.

The smell of roasting coffee unplugs the night, stirs his soul into the ordinary reaches of the known world. If his eyes have slept, the body hasn’t. The rattle of broken sleep on track to derail the day. Mind chatter still parrots thoughts; it seems only these arched bridges know how to be still. As if by memory, morning surfaces, leaves absorbing first light while trees preach serenity along the web of Dutch canals.

Adventure a promise still, gusts of wind blow right through him. Trapped in its howls, passersby shy away and cabs break rank—take off with his other lives. The strangers who took his place soon became the fate he’s glad he never meets.

An Austen-worthy script, hard to predict how two separate lives would flip on their heads,
a rainlit street intersecting the day, soon to intersect their paths that night. Strangers in a strange bar, he sees her standing there, those royal purple heels and Cleopatra black-bob hair—Amsterdam in time to be inscribed on their hearts forever.

Restless feet dance on stable table tops among a flood of 27th birthday kisses, serendipity blowing the candle out on all their wishes—this was their happy hour. What begins as kindling
in the eyes catches fire in their bodies. Drunk on music, the minutes run fast then slow. The clock of night loses count of the hours till sunrise: those hours melt fast.

A phone number scrawled in bleeding ink, the bar napkin is all that keeps this story afloat. The next morning a mutiny of colour, but the memory of her is like sunlight in his veins. Outside, the day slowly blinks itself back to slumber. Claps of thunder toy with clouds that bluff, slow to play their hand. Stunted café conversations of others held against the wind eat up half the day. His empty stomach soon groans on an afternoon grown slim. People watching isn’t loneliness he thinks; he’s one among the crowd.

Clouds on tap, the sky is leaking beauty. Suddenly this rain. First droplets of a European spring begin to lick the skin — clean wounds of old. Now wading through the cobbled streets of dusk, red lights, and bare feet, he spies barber chairs sitting idle. Black leather thrones backlit against the halo of Neon Purple. Wooden arms extend a window seat to the flood of 30 Euros worth
of conversation and razor sharp wit.

A haze of hope chokes the night air. At home nowhere but here, he shuffles slowly and nowhere in particular, contemplating all the flashing things. Neon signs In storefronts — Open, All Nite, Take-away—taint him green and red. Yellow. Blue. If he could hear from her again she’d say cry when I tell you and cry when I don’t. Cry to the beat. Cry music, cry lyrics. Try tears. Coz, the only way to stop drowning is to swim your teardrops till you float to the top.

She still does to this day, a decade on. No longer strangers in a foreign land, only strangers to their former lives. Each left for adventure, returning only with a thirst for each other. These days it’s their daughter who sings from the next room—unbottled magic. When dusk falls, bedrooms, like angels, sprout wings; walls dismantle shadows at last light and break free. Their child, fallen at last up into the kingdom of the night: how her sleep divines dreamscapes where she can wander in much more than her own life.

And like old souls on a pilgrimage, the thin moon and slow stars still find faith outside, like these souls found each other. Life never stops writing itself. Like poets they continue to live in broken lines, like us all, trying to fix what breaks when they fall on broken times. Lives of perfect imperfection: that’s what makes their album truly sing. Sometimes they try to remember who they were before. No longer the syntax of themselves—Amsterdam had other plans.

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