Parade of brides
 

The Baltic Sea is my goal. I drive to the end of Europe, where the land melts step by step until it is only waves. First love is like a faith. We believed so much and we knew so little.
 
Bob Dylan twangs on the car stereo and the wheels drink the road. Fields and marshes and woods and villages, swallowed up whole. Ducks and sad dogs in muddy yards. Piles of bricks leaning against church walls. Then birch trees.
 
Their bark flashes white. It reminds me of what you once said. Something about birch trees and Poland, what was it exactly? Birch trees in the Fall, like a parade of brides, their hair a cascade of gold. You were talking to me, but who was I then?
 
In Miezdidroje, the rusty wrought iron balconies and deserted pavilions whisper a grandeur past. Pomerania: the word always made me think of 19th-century novels, where gentlemen in tails tap their canes on the pier wooden slats and plot murder beneath their high hats.
 
A shadowed lane rises and falls and ends in light and sea. Gulls loop cursives against the sky. Your ashes scatter with the sand. Now you are gone and I know who I am.



* French born, English writing Ariane
Synovitz now lives in the Czech Republic. She says “This is a fictional piece, but was inspired by a trip to Poland.”