Perpetrator and Victim

I got off the train and let Gulcan head to Hermannplatz alone. All the way I was thinking about the past, couldn’t make sense of it—why things happened the way they did, what it all meant. My stomach started hurting and I kept seeing faces from before, wondering what they were doing now, how they felt in that moment. Do you lose the right to be heard if nobody’s listening? I don’t have the strength to search for places where nothing terrible happened. The street was wet and dark, figures in black moving through it, crossing my path.

I can’t accept that she’s gone. Where is she? In the closet? The mirror? Next to the pillow? Out there somewhere? I wanted to lie down with her right then and felt ashamed of it. What I needed was to be close to someone. The ghosts from before wouldn’t let go—they dragged me down into this crushing sadness. When it really pours in this city, the silence gets heavier.

I got dizzy. Had to stop and hold onto a traffic light. Just for a moment. I saw all their faces at once—moving toward some distant future they didn’t understand, crying in front of the wreckage of their broken inner lives, begging for salvation. Or smiling down at me from somewhere split open and raw. I breathed in and tried to smile. This year I’ve been both the perpetrator and the victim. It makes me feel small, and because of that I can’t end this strange journey. If I get out, it won’t be fear that saves me. It’ll be disgust.