Flips, twists, dips and always swaying, always descending. One page of my printed draft that I was not able to stomp on and hold in place, tumbled in the wind off the balcony. All I could do was watch as it seemed to be descending endlessly. I know that is cliché.
As it was in the air, I had time to check the other pages, learn which one I was watching drift away. It was the last page of the story. The page with the probing questions and jotted half-answers. On the back was the stanza for a poem I started here in Prague, the first poem I’ve tried to write in at least a year. This particular stanza had been eluding me, each stab at it deflecting off the ribs instead of cutting straight through. But I had found the stanza earlier that day in a windowsill and scratched it down hastily before it blew out the window and away.
For a moment—maybe more than a moment, now that I think about it, but it’s hard to be sure, time was acting strangely as I watched the page fall—I wanted some way to reach out and snatch it, bring it back to me so that I could hold on to it. But as it continued down that desire diminished, then disappeared. Watching the paper flip and hang and flutter was beautiful. I know that is cliché.
Plus, I realized it may land on the hotel’s deck, or maybe more accurately, hotel’s basement’s roof, but such a statement sounds ridiculous, even as I write it. If it landed there I could ask Janna, the receptionist, to retrieve it for me. Then I could have my draft and the notes back, the fleeting last stanza.
As it got lower, my eyes seeing the courtyard in a new light and at different angles and levels, the page began to tease me. Would it fall in someone’s yard, or stay within the confines of the hotel’s walls? At this juncture there was certainly no fear. No, not quite. Nor would I say there was even a sense of worry. Now it was simple curiosity speckled with wonder.
In watching it fall away, I knew I was gaining something I had been hoping to find. Losing something doesn’t matter. You can hold on to what’s important within yourself. So when the page of paper landed in the grass among the brush in the yard next door, I smiled knowing that it is down there and I am up here and we are still together. (I feel like that may be a lyric to a song I hardly remember.)
The page landed on its face, the stanza staring up, and remained in the yard for a few days. I would look down at it out on the balcony smoking a cigarette, enjoying the air and sun and sky, and smile.
I like to imagine the Czech family finally finding it in their yard, confused how it got there, not understanding what’s on it. I like to imagine that the page means nothing. It allows me some lightness, to feel released and a little more free. Like that page of paper, I’m most comfortable tumbling in the air with the wind, most at home, wherever I happen to be.
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