Leaving Rhode Island: Berlin

A girl looks like Berlin

You can’t help that

You really can’t

Kate doesn’t get it

She doesn’t get that people are pulled

In certain directions and…

That it’s nothing personal

That there’s nothing you can do

Or want, I guess I should say

That—um, competes—with that pull

With that magnetism

You asked me why I want to leave?

I want to leave because I can’t…

I guess it would boil down to fear?

Fear that I’m denying this pull

This thing I feel

That makes me Google Berlin five or six times a day

And just let my mind drift off

Thinking about what it would be like

To move there

I don’t know why

I’ve never been there

But people ask me, you know

They look at me and ask if I’m from there

I’m not kidding

Sometimes just Germany

But a few times—Berlin

They’ve actually said—‘Are you from Berlin?’

And you can’t help it, you think—

Maybe there’s a reason for that

I’d love to be one of those people

Who just goes where they want to go

And, you know, a person who, who, who—

Just…says ‘I’ll see what happens’

And then does

But you have ties to people, you know?

People who have their own pulls

Who…who don’t look like the places

That you look like

Maybe I should have fallen in love with

Somebody who looks like Berlin

…That was…I wasn’t being…

It would break her heart

And I’m not the type of person…

…Who can just do that

And not care, you know

Not care about…doing that

In my head, my mind, my fantasies

I’m this black and white heroine

From an old spy movie

An overcoat and a hat

Smoking a long cigarette

Marlene Dietrich, or something

Hard as nails

Cold, really cold

And I could pull it off, I bet

The look of it

But underneath that, there’d be something else

Some other person

And what about her?

What does she look like?

Where does she look like

She’s from?

I wish, you know…

I wish I knew