Rachel Gollay

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The way is awkward, graceless, a sticky foal stumbling to her feet, taking the wrong train, wrong line, wrong time, using the edge of a dog waste receptacle in Hyde Park to pry off a bottlecap.  (Forgot the bottle opener.)

The way is in waiting at the checkpoints, as you remove your shoes (they check for knives) and board the trans-Atlantic flight.  It is adrenaline-rush, swept up and across, buffeted to places you never knew you wanted to be.  Cramps, air bubbles at 30,000 feet.

Free, but not free from pangs, not free from urgent urination at an abandoned Metro stop, just outside the sandy hostel town.  Everything is walking-distance, everything in earshot, panicked moments mingled with the dulling of too much Eurotrash beer.  You play it cool, easy, alone, shredding beer labels with your fingernails and peering down the darkened tracks, pleading for the next train, pushing out the prospect of being slit-up sideways by a knife gang.

The train will come, which is a comfort, sliding out of the darkness.  But anticipating its arrival leaves a breath forever stuck in the lungs.  Then you will exhale, step off the platform, mind the gap without incident, without stumbling.  You gather and blink and unfurl, slowly, wobbling up on spindly stick-legs.