Small and Hers Again

The plane touched down just after dawn and the mountains were already there, pale and indifferent, as if they had never left their posts. Two countries in a row had stretched the world into something noisy and continuous. Now Bishkek folds itself small again. The taxi smelled of dust and someone else's cigarettes. My keys still fit the lock. The cezve waited on the stove like a patient friend who refuses to ask questions.

Jetlag is a peculiar kind of honesty. The body arrives before the mind, or the other way around, and for a day or two nothing quite lines up. I walked to the corner shop for bread and stood too long in front of the yoghurt, listening to the refrigerator hum.

The street cats watched me with the mild contempt they reserve for people who have been elsewhere. Aigerim texted a single word, home, and I sent back a photograph of my bare feet on the kitchen tiles.

Summer writing has its own weather. The mornings are cool enough for a cardigan, the afternoons thick with the promise of dust storms that may or may not arrive. I have opened the notebook again, the one with the soft green cover, and I am letting the sentences come slowly. No rush.

The shortwave murmurs in the corner, a distant station dissolving into static. Outside, a neighbour is watering her tomatoes and singing under her breath. The city feels small and hers again, which is to say it feels like mine. I will take the rest of the week to remember how to stay.