They’d wanted the two-story two-bath
above the creperie in De Pijp,
though they’d been willing to reconsider
the budget for old-world charm
and sleek, modern finishes in Zagreb,
a quintessential hacienda in the hills
flanking Quito, or a lanai shading
the Russian district of Phnom Penh,
but what they’d really, really wanted
was Prague in a black & white movie
adaptation of a book about Prague
in the 70s. They’d even read it in college,
and they’d known even then they wanted
other people’s architecture and pathos.
They wanted other people’s transit
and squalor. They’d been prepping
for years in unincorporated Atlanta
when a job-call lit up their scopes.
They’d tracked it to this bang-on-budget
studio nestled above the ornamental
fruit stands and decorative geriatrics
occupying a piazza at the city-center
of this other life they’d wanted to wear
like a pelt. And we watched their wanting
from a blind we’d erected in our living room,
and we watched as they waded, timid at first,
into the liquid crystals of the television.
Then, more swiftly, their daggers clenched
between their teeth, they slipped beneath
its pixilated surface.
--Jaswinder Bolina
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