Getting Lost

If I sit still long enough, it comes to me. It always does in the silence, even all these years later. It starts with the simplest of thoughts. Dense slabs of bread - cut on the table with a dull knife - crumbs scattering. A sticky jar of strawberry gem. A mug of Nescafe mixed with cacao and sugar.

Then she's there. My Romanian sister, inspecting a jar of Super-Chunky Skippy that I've brought with me to share. She licks her fingers and squints at the label. Nutritional Facts? She asks, her brow lifts. Fat. Calories. She laughs, You really want to know how bad what you're eating? I laugh with her. Oh, crazy, neurotic Americans. But I still refuse the jar when she tilts it toward me.

Her family spreads their bread with untura from a tub. Pure, white and shiny - a plastic bucket of lard. They fry potatoes every night in a pot of oil and eat them with fried eggs and untura slathered bread. Yet, they're the skinniest family I've ever met. Each with willowly limbs and impossible legs that stretch to their necks.

It's because they work hard and they don't own a car. They walk everywhere. It's a beautiful place to walk, Sighisoara. The old city, with it's infamous market square where once Vlad the impaler displayed his bloody pride. The park, filled with barefoot children. Main street. The smell of hot bread.

And I'm lost there.

Until the phone rings or the baby cries and I'm spit back out in the present. Years apart from those streets, that family, my once-upon-a-time life. But, aching as though I've just left.