Alone in Bordeaux, my first instinct is to cry. The others were behind me, but I’m not sure where they are now. The sticky feeling comes when I’m on my way to the fountain. Twisting marble horses reach high above my eyes. They appear to be leaping from the water and trampling the writhing bodies of humans underneath. I stop to appreciate the artwork but in my search for the grandeur, I miss the best part: the water is spraying from the horses’ noses.
The pressure behind my eyes doesn’t leave when I’m past the fountain, walking down a dirt road bracketed by birch trees arching up and over from both sides. I decide this road is my favorite in Bordeaux; the covenant of trees forms a pathway hidden from the buildings. The pale green leaves filter out the sunlight, creating a cool hush throughout the air. This is a place touched by the whimsical, tucked between the city and the river like a bookmark. Like a place cut from a different cloth altogether. I stop against a low concrete roadblock to jot in my notebook: It’s beautiful here, a lot like Paris except I’m less sad.
I had left the group in a rush, weaving between strangers until I could no longer feel them behind me. I had been spurred on by a yearning for a foreign feeling: solitude. I want to find it wonderful. Drawn by the crowds shuffling in and out of the city, I close my notebook and keep moving. Except I stop again ten feet away to write in its pages against the trunk of a tree. I only get one line in before I scamper off, self-conscious when a man turns my way, but maybe it is all I meant to write. I write against a tree now.
Bordeaux is my first taste of being alone. I’m caught between two feelings: one of longing and one of relief. My family haunts my empty sides, and their voices in my head guide every move. When to sit, where to stand, what stores to enter, what to buy. My notebook turns into their ears, and I write into it compulsively. And yet their absence is a blessed silence. My heartbeat only stutters when my mind trips, and I forget I’m not just stealing moments of solitude. I forget I’m just walking–not walking away. Not walking away from fights or obligations or in the middle of car shows, upset with my parents for dragging me away from a sleepover. Not slipping from their side, racing to the top floor, ducking behind felt curtains and into dark corners. I forget I’m not hiding with the expectation that my family is searching. I forget I’m not waiting, both hoping and petrified that someone will find me. In Bordeaux, my hours alone are not borrowed. They’re given, and they’re mine.
I stop at a park to rest under a tree. I’m parched and trying to find pleasure in the dirt digging into my legs, in the sounds of the city magnified by the absence of company. I open my notebook. Waterspout. Bikes. Crinkling paper (boy eating sandwich w/ girl). Big men in the corner. Couple’s silent conversation. I sit still long enough until I can hear the pigeons take flight. I sit until I see him.
