One Return Ticket
On going out and coming in
It is Tuesday.
You have to push yourself to leave the apartment.
You need the bread and the candle.
Put your headphones on.
Press play.
One hour and fifty minutes.
Leave your home just before noon.
Don’t forget to take the rubbish on your way out — the bathroom bin too.
Nod to the neighbour you have never met on your way down the stairs.
All 97 steps.
Take a picture of the alarm box near the front door that has been ringing on and off for months.
You will report it to the property management again.
Nobody will fix it.
Put the hood of your raincoat on.
It always rains in Glasgow.
That’s why you love it.
Walk to Buchanan Station.
Buy one return ticket.
Stand on the platform for five minutes and contemplate how rich your inner world is in contrast to your outside world.
Then contradict yourself — you have a rich outer world too.
It just hasn’t felt that way for a while.
Take the tube to Hillhead.
On the tube, she arrives again.
I cannot dispel you from my thoughts.
Richard Burton says this to Elizabeth Taylor in The Sandpiper.
You have been saying it about your mother for years without knowing it.
The train moves.
You look at the other passengers.
Nobody is looking back.
You can dispel her.
She doesn’t get to live with you here.
You arrive at Hillhead.
Leave the station and walk north towards the botanical gardens.
A woman passes you with a dog wearing a sweater.
Turn right at the church that became a dance floor.
The candle shop and the bread shop are on the same street.
Go into the candle shop.
Smell every candle they have.
Take your time.
I cannot dispel you from my thoughts.
The one made from coconut wax.
Sea salt and sage.
That one.
The owner is behind the counter.
She tells you her birthday is tomorrow.
You stand there for a while, two women on either side of a counter, talking about Easter, birthdays, and the beauty of Danish design.
You leave with the candle wrapped carefully.
The air outside is cold after the warmth of the shop.
You pull your hood back on.
Next, the bread shop.
Arabic bread.
The kind that has followed you here, uninvited but necessary.
Buy three bags.
You will freeze two for later.
I cannot dispel you from my thoughts.
Across the street, a cheese shop.
Go in.
Ask for comté.
A woman stands in the middle of the shop.
She wraps it in paper.
You didn’t plan for this.
You return with more than you came for.
Walk towards Kelvingrove Station.
You need to decide what you will do with your hair.
Straight, it looks like your father’s.
Curly, it looks like your mother’s.
Either way, you are not sure you like what you see.
I cannot dispel you from my thoughts.
Look around you.
Flow with the people entering the station.
Flow like the wave you are.
Take the tube back to Buchanan Station.
Walk to your apartment.
The alarm is still ringing.
Nobody will fix it.
Walk up the 97 steps.
Take your headphones off.
You are home.
Twenty minutes still playing.
Wash your hands.
Make the egg sandwich she taught you.
Then you remember. She didn’t teach you.
She showed it to your friend, years ago.
You happened to be there.
You learned it from the edge of her attention.
She made that egg sandwich for your brother every morning.
You always took the half he didn’t finish.
I cannot dispel you from my thoughts.
Eat alone at the table.
The bread is right.
It tastes like it always did.
Take a shower.
Stand under the hot water.
Think about your hair.
What will you do with it.
Straight, your father’s.
Curly, your mother’s.
I cannot dispel you from my thoughts.
Step out.
Look in the mirror.
Your real hair is neither.
It never was.
It sits somewhere in between —
a combination of both,
belonging to neither,
belonging entirely to you.
You are not your father.
You are not your mother.
You are not the wounds they left,
Nor the lessons they forgot to teach.
You are what came through all of it.
Light the candle.
Sea salt and sage.
I CAN dispel you from my thoughts.
I am not my father.
I am not my mother.
I am me.
Beautiful. Painful. Vivid. Brilliant. Inspiring.