By: Magdalena Mihaylova
The storylines that overlap in the big city are like the contrails observed in the Madrid sky.
I.
I sit at the corner where the avenue meets the parkway, where the cars pass by each other with an indifference equal to that of the people crossing the pedestrian walkway. From my perch on the steps of an old red building, its painted facade faded from years of a scorching Madrid sun, I observe the storylines of the city unfold before me: a tight embrace between a couple, stealing a quick kiss before the taller of the two speeds off on his motorcycle. An argument between a produce van driver and an Uber chauffeur, causing a symphony of honking as they step out of their vehicles in the middle of the intersection to check for damage. A group of older women waiting underneath the shade of a comically small tree, gossiping and stealing glances at me scribbling away impressions in my journal. A mother walking steadfastly to catch the blinking green crosswalk light, dragging her two young children behind her. I pause and watch her confident, frustrated steps; the distracted whining of the two little boys. I realize that school is probably out for the summer. I realize how my life used to orbit around that type of information. I realize that I’m slowly growing to have more in common with her than with them.
The storyline of childhood spins and spins until it spits you out into adulthood, disoriented and deluded. On the brink of 25, at a crossroads between two life stages. Full of jejune optimism and melodramatic despair. Perhaps one’s twenties are precisely like the avenue I sit at: a long process of green gos and red stops, of turns, of merging and separations. Of constant movement.
I write down all of this in my journal, look up—all of these characters are now gone, replaced by new faces crossing the street, saying their holas and hasta luegos and exchanging glances under the neon June sky. Storylines in the city, captured in looseleaf paper.
II.
It was such a sexy idea: my first summer in the city. During the winter months, it was the buoy that kept me afloat when the piercing October rains left me shaking on the metro ride to work or when the bite of the February night accompanied me on my walks back from the university. Images of hot concrete and morning coffee on the balcony with a new lover were all that propelled me through that long stretch of little sun and what felt like little life.
When the first blossoms arrived in early March, along with a stretch of 20-degree days, the city first sucked itself inward and then, as if it were taking a deep breath, pushed out everything at once: all of us waiting for that first ray of sunshine to brush our faces and remind us that this world is indeed beautiful, even within all of the concrete and precariousness and isolation inherent to a metropolitan capital. Suddenly, people were spilling out from everywhere: we were on sidewalks, andando sin rumbo or rushing to work. We were reclined on terrazas or cuddled up on balconies, on rooftops and tumbados on blankets in the park. We were running up and down the long avenues and swerving on bikes through the ever-congested main streets. The sexiness of summer was imminent, and I felt as though the city was finally settling into me, opening up its arms in an invitation to love again, to feel the allure of its dusky park benches and Sundays spent at tables in callejones.
I love the city for this reason exactly: for the possibilities in the movement, the chaos, the noise—the constant feeling that in any given moment a new storyline can begin, just as fast as they can end. The sensation that the world stretches out in front of you, that its boundaries never end, that there is no limitation in its vastness. That your irrelevance is the root of reinvention; that your smallness is only noticeable in such great openness.
III.
The window of the living room opened out onto the early morning sky, but we had lost track of time. I watched you gather your clothes, the outline of your back barely visible in the paleness of dawn. The birds chirped as if to announce their presence, to alert us to the late spring breeze that lazily tousled the pale curtains. I readjusted my gold hoop earrings while I thought, stupidly, this is a perfect moment. The romance of a nocturnal tryst. The backdrop of the city, of a foreign apartment, of spontaneity surprisingly sought in sobriety. The storylines I had created in my mind, an eager author, always on a last gasp attempt to capture her reader, keep him in between the pages.
IV.
As I lean against an old oak tree, waiting for the bus, I wonder how much of our lives are designed around ideas, not realities. I look at the blank stares of the city’s passersby and wonder if their boredom is to blame for the creation of obsessive storylines, of escapist fantasies. I wonder if it even matters—at what point do those fantasies feel so real that they become so? At what point does our performance of connection end up connecting us?
V.
A lone plane crosses the heat-stained sky. An emptiness native to summer stifles the air as I pace through the deserted plaza. I suddenly feel an acute nostalgia as I realize the passionate summer narrative I had carefully constructed is barely being held up by a thread of pathetic WhatsApp messages and long, unromantic silence. There is nothing sexy about being embarrassed, I think, even in the big city, even if decorated in poetic imagery, even if it only ever was a connection created in my head.
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