“Wanna smoke?”

We stepped outside under the awning of the bookshop, looking out onto the street. It was cold and sunny. Frost covered the pavement like icing. You took a packet of Marlboros from your pocket and handed me one.

“Nice moustache,” I said, nervous, when you lit my cigarette, and you saw my eyes flicker over your face, your fingers grazing mine as you cupped your hands to protect the flame from the wind. You ignored my comment, its platitude. Instead, you lit your cigarette without looking at me and blew the smoke through your nostrils like you couldn’t wait to get it out of you. Then you turned your head in my direction. Your eyes measured me. I sensed that you wanted to say something, readied my body for whatever it was that you needed to come out. Then the shop door swung open and Hania appeared, with a bag filled with books. We stood for a moment, uncomfortable, mourning the missed opportunity. We searched for words, each one of us, trying to say something that meant anything. In the end, we just said goodbye. We said it casually, like we would see each other again soon or maybe like people who had never been much more than acquaintances. You two walked off, arm in arm, and I watched you, the burning cigarette still in my hand, the last thing you’d ever given me.

*  *  *

I come back home from my walk, take off my coat, and rub my hands. I sit down on the couch and stare at the TV without switching it on.

I remember how I left our country and how I thought my nightmare of loneliness would return. The nightmare of fossilized time, where I walk through the desolate landscape of overgrown gravestones, not a soul around, condemned to a life among the dead. But it didn’t. I came to a new country, a new city, and decided to leave my loneliness behind. America is good like that. Even if it isn’t true, even if you can’t ever completely shed your past, no one here will tell you that. It makes it easier. Easier to fool yourself. You, of all people, must know what that feels like.

And yet, it occurs to me now that we can never run with our lies indefinitely. Sooner or later we are forced to confront their darkness. We can choose the when, not the if. And the longer we wait, the more painful and uncertain it will be. Even our country is doing it now—facing its archive of lies, wading through the bog toward some new workable truth.