You once commented that it was pointless, my degree. It’s not like you’ll ever teach, you sneered, It’s not like you’ll ever need the genealogy of the Habsburg Dynasty in real life. You had a lot to say about real life. You had a lot to say about you, me, real life, and Vienna.

I flip my phone up in the air, catching it nimbly between my long fingers. This morning they were in your hair. Raking through it gratefully, like newborn leaves in a dry harvest. You were a rarity. Rarity. I mouth the word, floating it between my lips and chewing it in my mouth. I let it drop in favor of the phrase “One ticket please” and I stumble over the next, “Vienna.”

I want to whisper it, lock it up in the air between the cashier and I. It’s a dirty thing, the name of an infatuation against all laws of nature, against all monogamy. Vienna. And I know you are whispering it now, little hands running over the plastic of your telephone listening to me say it too. I’m leaving for Vienna. I’m leaving you for Vienna. You are hearing it for the first time, knowing you should have heard it all those times, would have heard it--if only you were listening.

You said I never planned things out. You, with every strand of hair straight as a pin and stuck in place. You’re always stuck in those books, those maps! They’re all you ever talk about. You can’t ever be content with what is! With what you have! You would cry as you said these things, curled up in my desk chair, in one of my old singlets and jackets.

I thought that’s what you loved about me? I would smile. Come on, Anna. I would pull you up out of the chair, rock you in my arms like you were a child to be coddled, a clock I could sync to my rhythm.

When you weren’t quiet, you were loud. Inconsolable, deranged. You would flitter your hands about as if they were insects, pests inside your own blood and bone.

I cringe now. I know what it was you screamed now. You could have taken the Exacto knife out of our desk draw, cut right through your words now. You wanted my direction to be yours, Anna. You wanted one of those maps to lead my love right home to you.

I swing my bag over my shoulder, what these books and maps have made of me. You could have sidled up beside me. Clasped your tiny hand in mine, the other sweating the ink of a ticket too.

I hold mine alone, crisp and unbroken, believing at last, the justification of distance between our shores.