I never knew the word flâneuse until I read it in a poem. A woman who wanders the city without purpose. I had to laugh. It felt like being seen through a word I had no business knowing. A meandering girl. What a strange but delicious kind of threat. Who gave her time to meander?
Ah, time. You have to be sneaky about it. Like a poem, there’s always something unfolding in the background while you stir the dish. The rice was on. The laundry in the machine had finished two hours ago. I still hadn’t folded yesterday’s. I was already late for something. I wasn’t sure what.
But I walked. Not far. Just out to the front gate.
There is no Paris here on our street. Just cracked tiles and an old plastic chair nobody claims but everybody uses. To wait for the Joyride. To smoke. To stare up at the trees. I sit there to breathe. I once saw the neighbor’s wife sit there and cry for a full ten minutes before she stood up and went back inside. She nodded at me and I smiled like a good comrade. The flâneuse would’ve noticed that. I guess I did too. I guess I always do.
Some days I think about that line I read, about a woman who stood still and was enough. I don’t remember the rest. It comes to me while I’m putting away spoons, or wiping surfaces, or peeling my kids’ drawings off the fridge. I wonder if she had a fridge. I wonder if she got to stand still on purpose.
This is what the living do. We walk when we shouldn’t. We forget the second load in the washer. We burn the rice and eat it still. We let the tomato go soft on the counter. We notice things we’re not supposed to have time for. How the wind moves the curtain. How silence pools by the sliver of light under the door.
And freedom doesn’t knock. It doesn’t give you time. It comes when you forget to explain yourself. When you leave one task unfinished. When no one is watching. When you hold a ripe fruit and don’t think about anyone else eating it.
I belong to myself.
At least, I want to.
But someone’s calling me.
The gas is still on low.
The spoon is still where I dropped it.
And the laundry. God, the laundry.
Still.
I walked.
I saw the light on the floor.
That counts for something, doesn’t it?
Even if no one saw.
Even if I didn’t go far.
Even if I came back.
