he doesn’t comprehend how empty this house will become after you’ve left

She just had enough of his memory to barely fill a teaspoon, and although the contents hardly reached the rounded metal edge, the sweetness of them made up for the rest.

The coffee was warm enough to last a long sip until the taxi arrived at the front door, honking, demanding she make an appearance. The flight would leave in the morning, morning being the time the time the sun was shining in the sky. In fact, the sun had never stopped shining, the earth had just been revolving all night on its axis, and now the land was the right side up, in line with the gigantic star. She thought of how, a couple of hours ago when she had been sleeping in her bed, anxiety biting relentlessly at her toes, she had indeed been sleeping upside down. The children at school would laugh generously when she explained this to them, giggles bubbling up from the sinkholes of their tiny stomachs. But now her head was empty of all the lessons she’d taught and the absence of her ability to convince anyone of anything absolved her of any gravitational polarity rules. She might have been sleeping the right side up for all she knew.

He came. He honked. She stood.

Placed thirty one dollars into his palm.

In this country taxis are prepaid, ma darling

Irony. He looked much more like a foreigner than she did.

Back home this amount would cover three intercity taxi rides, darling she thought without opening her mouth

The dent in her pocket was yet another symbol of life inside the economic cocktail maker that remixed the relative value of an individual’s purchasing power. She had learnt to eat less and drink more water, only spend on necessities. But it was not only about her, she considered the thousands of millions of bodies that were affected by global currency exchange prices daily. What it meant for the investment banker, what it meant for single mother struggling to fill the dinner table. Theirs too, was a world absolved of gravity. Mindlessly, she carried them all in her pockets, hanging from strings tied to her waist, the ones that overflowed clung to the seams in her pockets, other gripped onto her naked ankles.

The coffee was cold and the milk had risen to the surface in large creamy swirls. The cat perched by the window looked at her for a long time, telling her that when she’d cross that threshold his eyes would go from green to blue, blue to grey, then grey to black. That he would miss playing with her bun while she read, undoing it like a large ball of yarn. He would miss cuddling under the warmth of her robe and the way she never seemed to be fully present, maybe that’s why they had bonded so quickly. She joined him on the windowsill, the frail kitchen basil holding communion between them.

The manic taxi driver possessed a large hairy stomach that stuck out from under his butter coloured shirt. With stout nervous arms he hauled her suitcases one by one into the back of the car, the motion making his hazelnut hairpiece flip backwards then forwards, momentarily. He rested, taking a deep breath, wiping the sweat off his brow, scratching two large itching nipples under the polyester. He looked like someone, someone whose face she couldn’t remember, someone with a laughter hearty enough to fill a room or a teaspoon. Someone who’s language only half her tongue knew how to speak. The other half was silent, waiting for something worthy of speaking about.