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Going to Polonia, published by Mélanie Francès
At the bus station, I am sitting in the blue cafeteria at dawn,
watching travelers queue up for a coffee and sit at the tables,
stirring the thin plastic spoon in my cup and smiling to myself.
I’ve taken many night buses before, to run away to New York City,
to meet up for forty-eight hours with a lover in a sleepy hotel,
to run up three flights of stairs to a delighted face and a warm body.
I’ve never taken the bus to Detroit before, to mysterious highway 401,
to windswept Chicago and the never-ending waters of Lake Michigan,
to Green Bay and the tip of Sturgeon Bay, to see a small church.
You told me about the church in Polonia in the middle of the night,
sitting up against the wall, telling me about the peaceful wooden
structure standing in the middle of a field, looking a little Russian.
I said that we should drive there one day, that you should show it to me,
that you could teach me how to drive on some dirt road on the way,
that it would be something to discover the colors of Wisconsin with you.
On my way to Detroit, I sit now in the front seat by the bus driver,
my face lit up by gold green light, neon lights and road signs,
my hands against the cold glass, my legs crossed like an Indian girl.
I am on a bus to a completely unknown place, the town of Polonia,
simply because the image appeared and clung to fatigue-fueled nights
and I promised myself I would seek the apparition with or without you.
New families get on in Detroit, they laugh loudly and tell a few jokes,
loners sit at the back with headphones and stare ahead in contemplation,
students hop off one after the other in small towns during the night.
Ann Arbor, Jackson, Beadle Lake, Galesburg, Portage and Kalamazoo,
I form attachments to bus depots, grainy departure areas in the rain,
aquamarine women’s restrooms where I reapply lipstick to my mouth.
I am free to feel melancholy and travel miles and miles in the dark,
with a full moon shivering behind the trees and trucks speeding by,
with young women and men falling asleep on each other like origami.
Chicago, Milwaukee, Waukesha, Madison, Portage and Endeavor,
I invent a family story for the bus driver and listen quietly to his,
I remember every single detail, I get lost in the insanity of it all.
I eat alone in cafeterias and listen to the surrounding conversations,
floors shine everywhere, coffee is brewed endlessly behind counters,
people smile at me when they hand me the change and the weather.
Westfield, Coloma, Hancock, Bancroft, Plover and Stevens Point,
I pay more attention as the destination gets clearer and more defined,
the sky is huge and heavy, the roads smell of something familiar,
the accent has shifted again and not one single person speaks French.
I get off the bus in the small town of Polonia and I look all around me.
The church stands in the wheat at the end of a dwindling dirt road,
its white shutters are weather-beaten, its front door slightly crooked,
wide open to the passer-by, to a girl who came and doesn’t know why.
In Polonia, I sit inside the small church that I had pictured with you,
I say hello to the puzzled priest and explain how sometimes in a movie,
without anyone knowing, the most beautiful moment is a deleted scene.
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