Spring will come and I will grow smart.

I will feel grass beneath my palm and make it last,

this time around my heart will not come apart.

When I got his text about the possibility of meeting, I was not surprised. I knew I had manifested it through the tears released under the thick duvet that kept me pressed into my mattress for months. Once, it was the two of us under damp sheets. The ache for you, your touch, your voice, the inside of your mouth tasting like dew, like wine, like sin, like you. Over time, that special part of you became my phantom limb, your body, a mist of tiny pin pricks nibbling at my skin. I held on to the thought of you as long as I could.

The tension is palpable, the air buzzing with excitement and doubt, as we’re sitting opposite to each other on a small terrace on the bank of the Vltava. It is late spring, and the sun has not yet set, but it is low enough, so that I have to squint when I look over the river. The water glisters in its warm light and playfully catches and reshapes it into ripples. It took us a while to actually find a place to sit down. I guess the Czechs, or at least the people of Prague, are not big on terraces. The only places we could find, where one could sit outside to eat and drink, were the overpriced and obnoxious cafés around the Orloj clock on the big town square. The kind of place where the seats are filled with Americans and the staff looks at you with disdain.