1.

my utopia exists in fragments. perhaps, she once was a vase or a porcelain statue, very beautiful and expensive. someone brought her as a souvenir from distant lands and put it on the upper shelf of a living room cabinet, so that all guests who come to the house could admire it. but then it fell down and broke. all pieces scattered around the room and got lost under the furniture. it fascinates me to be finding these pieces every once in a while, although they are sharp and may cut my skin. i bought a super-glue. the package said it was so strong and secure that it could stick a nerdy-looking man to the ceiling. in the picture, he was hanging upside down. i was little when i first saw it, so i believed it without a second thought. just as i believed in the apocalypse and talking to ghosts. my plan was to use this glue to put the pieces back together and see again what my utopia looks like. it seemed like i had never seen her before. i’m not sure if it was even possible to find all the pieces at all. but i missed her a lot. and selfishly, i was thinking that she was missing me, too.

2.

my utopia is a baby. i love her a lot and am willing to give her everything. but sometimes she doesn’t seem to love me back. she wakes me umy utopia is a baby. i love her a lot and am willing to give her everything. but sometimes she doesn’t seem to love me back. she wakes me up at night screaming into my head — WAKE UP WAKE UP WAKE UP! and i get up and run to check on her.

my little, baby utopia turned into an island. she does not know yet how to be a lonely island in the middle of a big angry ocean. she cries. she throws tantrums with winds and storms and high tides. but i listen to her patiently, each time she is sad or unwell. there is nothing i can do to help her, since she is so much bigger than me. but at least i can show up and be there for her. i tell her, — utopia, you are so much stronger than you know, you have lived for so long and seen so much, i love you. when she hears me, she quiets down and she carries on. but there are times, when she does not listen. times like these, i feel how my body weakens and i find it impossible to care for her any longer. when i feel her looking at me again, i manage to find the power.

utopia was once a town in a valley. she was my fortress, my imaginary friend, my home. she was the kingdom where i lived, where i could dream and do whatever i wanted. and as in all kingdoms, there was a king. he once got an idea that his kingdom was not great enough and needed more treasures to become a truly great kingdom. he commanded to dig a large hole in the ground to find the treasures. so his people started digging holes, really large holes, and there were many of them, until they finally found a golden mine. it laid right under the body of utopia. it wasn’t easy to dig out the treasures, nobody knew exactly where they were. the king decided to steel all the gold from her entrails, and he damaged her. but my utopia didn’t care about the gold. to her, it was only a toy, she knew there were things more precious. the king, apparently, didn’t care about more precious things. he hurt her so badly, she cried for help. the river in the valley heard her cry and directed her streams towards the wound in the body of utopia. the river sacrificed herself and became one with the sea to protect utopia and never make the king reach her ever again. this is how she became an island, a lonely island, so angry with the rest of the world. she seemed ferocious, i could not recognize her. i could not see her clearly either—it was all snow clouds and fog.

after the flood, i had to move to a village on the other side of the valley. i was afraid my utopia would drown and die, but yet, she couldn’t have. even when i couldn’t see her, i could hear her, always. sometimes i would take long walks and go to the cliff, right where the riverbank once was. the water would splash below me, and on the horizon i could see utopia. a tiny-tiny piece of her. she seemed so far away, but i could hear her very clearly, as if the distance didn’t exist at all. i yelled to her, UTOPIA, SUNSHINE, LOOK AT ME! but oh my goodness, she sometimes screamed so loud, she couldn’t hear me. so i just watched her cry, and it hurt me, too. there was nothing i could do to help her, but i felt she needed me.

once, on an especially stormy night the waves were so strong, they brought seashells and treasures up from the bottom of the sea and left them on the shores. the cliff seemed not as high above the water as it was before. in the morning, the shore became crowded by the villagers who, of course, ran to pick up the gems. everyone was trying to grab a piece. they were shouting at each other, fighting. when i came to the shore the next day, and something cut my foot so badly. the blood started dripping on the sand. i sat down on the stone to see the wound. there was a tiny piece of porcelain stuck in my skin. i took it out and wrapped a ribbon i had on my shirt around my foot to stop the blood. i washed the porcelain piece in the sea. and immediately, as the blood washed away, i saw the familiar color, the ivory rose. i knew it was her. my poor little utopia, she was battling with the water and pushed it so hard, it caused a storm. she did not yet know how else to talk.

i decided to leave my home and come to her. the home without her didn’t seem like home to me anyway. i went to talk to the king and ask him to give me a boat. once i mentioned where i was intending to travel he became embittered. he was still so mad at utopia that he forbade me to travel to her.

i began to think that i might have to flee if i had really wanted to see her. the king’s anger only grew, and there was no hope he’d let me go. he issued a law where he made any mentions of utopia considered a crime. his guards started watching me. but what have i done? he wanted to erase her. her, who was once everything to me. the people i saw in the streets became stone cold. the gems they found on the shore a few days back didn’t seem to make them happy any longer.

secretly, i still kept coming to the shore every night to watch her. i made a little shelter in a ravine i found in the forest so that no one could find me. i needed a secure place to stay and plan my escape. i gathered wood to build my own boat. i knew i had to leave. i prayed for my utopia every day and i couldn’t wait to see her.

the boat was ready in a few weeks. it turned out be a total frail mess. but if there is no storm, i thought, it all shall work out. i waited for a still night, and when the wind quieted down, i pulled the boat to the shore, settled in and began to row.

when i think of her, i think of love. i mean, not i think but i rather feel love, very profound. we often think of love as a feeling that is directed on something or someone, like the love for one’s friends and family, or the love for a certain place. but her love is not directed, it just is, without any condition or purpose. and i felt it in the middle of the sea when i was getting closer. i was already half way there and the rest of the trip, i thought, would have only taken me a few miles. but then a storm began. my head got filled with terror, my stupid boat was not ready for this. thin particles of ice started slashing my skin. my utopia was screaming. she could not contain herself and wait for only a few more minutes to let me reach the land. she threw another tantrum. i can’t even imagine what she must have been feeling back in that moment. but i felt her wrecking power, this uncontained, totally wild stream that filled my body with noise, fear, and water. i was angry with her and i began to yell back, i wanted to ask her to stop, but that barely could be possible. i started to choke, and tried to scream again, and then again. my voice no longer made sound. but if she loved me back, how could she leave me there choking just like that? i gave in to the water. it felt so horrifyingly light, i thought i died. the only thing i could hear was the deep hum of the streams that were carrying me.

i woke up completely dry on the shore, my body carefully covered with a silk blanket, grains of sand creaking under my head. i was powerless and my body was cold. it was hard to get up. i was staring at the shadows on the fabric and felt very unsettled. i was craving to feel that same love i felt back when i was watching utopia from the far, but here, i couldn’t feel anything. my body felt weightless, but it was also numb. my baby utopia shed her embracing rays of light on me, but it still felt cold. she knew i was there. but when i got up to follow the light, i stumbled on a wall. there literally was a glistening crystal wall that kept me from walking further into the island. i started looking for a way in and spent the whole day wandering around, rubbing my hand along this wall and trying to find a gate. but there were none. maybe she wants to protect herself, i thought. and wondered why she decided to do it in such a weird way. this kind of wall couldn’t protect her, it couldn’t even hide anything. behind it, there was a forest, and perhaps a mountain, i wasn’t sure. in such foggy weather it’s hard to tell a mountain from a cloud. i turned around trying to trace my own steps back on the sand, when i felt her suddenly touch me on my shoulder, — maybe next time.

next time? but could there be the next time? i have always been told that time is just one. that it is the only thing out there that is just one. perhaps it sounds cheesy, but — how could there be the next? when i was a kid, i was scared of the apocalypse. scared to death, i couldn’t sleep at night picturing the earth being hit by an asteroid and falling into pieces, and us, all the pointless little beings, getting kicked out in space and choking there without air. one night i cried so loud, my father got up and came to me. he took me to the kitchen in the middle of the night, turned up the light on the hood above the stove, and made me tea. what scared you so much? — he asked. i am so scared that the world will end, — i mumbled, holding back the tears. he smiled back at me, — it won’t. see, even if you and me are no longer there, the world will still be because there is time. time is a part of the world, and it makes it impossible to end. there is no end to the world, because time cannot end.

if there is next time, there must be also other worlds then, right? but utopia couldn’t answer me, of course.

i walked along her shores, my feet in the ice cold water, my jeans wet at the bottom. it was starting to get dark and i already got settled with the idea of having to sleep outside despite the weather. i didn’t have much strength to resist, i felt powerless and angry at utopia. i could not believe she could treat me like that. but i knew she saw me. she took care of me the way she could, i guess. and frankly speaking, so did i. i really tried to feel the love for her again, but it was hard and i needed to learn feeling it again. i noticed that the wound on my foot began to bleed. i could not cry anymore, because i had no sense of sadness. the blood got into the soil. the water tried to wash away the red traces from the sand but they were hard to remove.

i really needed that blanket i had before to stay warm during the night. but there was nothing, not even a trace of what i saw in the morning. i could not find the place where i woke up, so after hours of trying, i fell down on the ground and fell asleep. it was starting to snow.

3.

when i was a kid, my grandma often read me books before bed. one of my favorite ones was a tale about how different animals in the forest survive during the winter. some of them change their fur to a warmer one. other animals just sleep for the whole season. some make little stocks of food in their hollows so that they didn’t have to go out much looking for what to eat. there were other ones, too, who preferred to just freeze in the river and die, kind of. but then in spring they would defreeze and keep on living their lives, like nothing ever happened. that fascinated me a lot. but later, when i grew up, i found out that in theory, people also could be frozen and then reborn, so to say, a couple decades or even centuries later. but i knew it only from fiction and this knowledge couldn’t help me survive the cold night anyways.

during the night, a slow quiet storm covered my body with snow. it felt surprisingly warm. i didn’t care that it was actually a ton of snowflakes laying upon my body, it kept me safe and it was all i had. but this cover seemed to have made me motionless. i would open my eyes sometimes and observe the changes in clouds during the daylight hours and fell back to sleep. i was scared to move around. i thought i needed to accumulate the power somehow to get up later and talk to utopia. i needed to feel in order to connect. i haven’t seen her in so long, i must have forgotten what it’s like to be around her. or what if she had always been there? my snowbed made me more numb. and maybe, she knew that and was waiting for me to fight against it to get myself up.

the night was so long and dark, that it seemed endless. what seemed to me like an eternity, for her perhaps was just a night. it was the only night when i couldn’t sleep and was waiting for the dawn. but the darkness didn’t go away. i was thinking about how i might have not been giving utopia enough attention. i wanted to care for her, but i couldn’t. it was hard to realize that. the clouds didn’t let the sunlight through. since thinking was all i could do, i began to remember all the warm days i had, all the days filled with feelings and movement. i was trying to let my body remember this state to move and get up. it was impossible to give care without having any power at all.

a storm hit the island. the sea was raging and pushing heavy waves towards the shore, one after the other. the blasts of the wind were hitting my lungs and i started to run out of breath. there was so much air, but then at the same time, it wasn’t enough. i began to scream for help, hoping utopia would make this stop, but i only heard the wind getting stronger. as if it was aiming to shout me out. i knew i had to get through this storm, otherwise, how do we move on? i knew that i at least should have tried to do it. for myself, and for utopia. i started looking at the sea waves as i did every day before. simply giving them attention, just as i gave it to her when i was watching her from the mainland. despite being loud and reckless, the waves had their own rule. they fell on the shore and then pulled back. i was observing them, counting for the ninth wave to be the biggest and i felt how my breathing began to coincide with these moves. pulling back on the inhale—taking the water, and then, on the exhale—release reaching further and further on the land each time. i kept on breathing heavily. the sea was telling me how not to run out of breath, and i stopped being scared. within the storm, i felt supported by it.

4.

the storm ended and the clouds cleared away a little. i could not believe i could still move after such crazy torture without feeling much pain at all. i thought it would destroy me completely, but, on the contrary, i finally felt that i could be strong. i felt stronger because i could feel in my bones this subtle power that helped me. it took me so much effort but all i had to do was to listen, as i had done before. sounds kind of easy, but listening may be difficult when you’re trying to scream the storm out of yourself and keep standing within it.

i felt grateful. and this feeling, for the first time in so long, filled me over the top. just being there felt right all of a sudden. it was cold. i was stepping slowly on the ground and couldn’t feel my feet because it all was frozen. it was hard to trust my body without any senses but i managed to walk away from the shore to the place where i once saw the wall. and there it was again. i touched it with my hand. very very gently. and in a few moments the surface under my palm started to melt. it wasn’t glass, it probably was ice, because i could feel it becoming softer as my hand absorbed the cold. i kept it there until the melted area got big enough for me to get in. i stepped in through the wall.

what i saw was so strangely familiar. the earth beneath my feet was still winter cold but i saw that the snow already melted a bit and in the thawed patch i noticed a footpath begin. my feet were numb and cold, my wound was bleeding again, but i couldn’t feel the pain so i just ignored it. i stepped on the path and began walking not having any idea where it led. hard to tell now, what time of the day it was, early morning dawn or evening twilight. i could barely see where i was walking.

when my younger brother was little, he would watch this cartoon about a little character who fell down on earth from the moon and was kindly adopted by two bees. he was the cutest friendliest creature. his best friend was a grasshopper, their enemies were two caterpillars. there was an episode where he got lost somewhere at night and little fireflies guided him home. it really would have been great to find some like those. my grandma told me to never walk alone in the dark hours. you’re a girl, she always told me. but i still walked alone at night.

i kept walking in what seemed a familiar direction in an absolutely strange environment until i got tired. i turned aside to relax and sat down staring at my dirty feet and trying to figure out where to go next. the frozen trees seemed identical everywhere. so there probably was no difference where to head next. i felt the ground under my feet become warm. this put me a little bit on alert. something was changing and i felt carefully excited about it. the warmth i felt on the ground was also spreading towards my right. so i decided to keep walking there, where the earth felt heated.

the place was mesmerizing, i have to tell you. tall-tall pines with frost on the needles, big stones on the sides, the air transparent like the clearest glass. the forest was becoming more and more dense, so i had to move away the branches to get ahead. i pulled away another one and saw water. a small round lake. it seemed like my track got me onto the top of a rock hill. i didn’t think i had climbed that high. from the top i saw the sea. it looked endless, bottomless, and foggy. i started looking around and was kind of hoping to see the land where i came from, but i couldn’t, it wasn’t there. it made me a little sad. i reached to touch the water, it felt warm. that’s why the ground was heated up, there must have been a well underneath. i was so happy to have discovered the lake, because i hadn’t taken a shower for who knows how long. besides, i now started to notice how horribly cold my body actually was. i took my clothes off and jumped into the water.

i stayed there for maybe an hour, although i can’t tell how long it actually took. it was hard to keep track of time here. i didn’t have a watch. i didn’t have anything in fact, because all things i took drowned during the storm. from up there i could see nearly the whole island. one part of it were the woods where i came from. the other part didn’t seem so overgrown. as the sky cleared from the clouds, i saw a narrow river and a little town further behind it. when the dusk began to approach, i heard the church bells.

from the lake, a little stream was running down the hill. i decided to follow it not to get lost. it soon became dark. but since the sky was finally clear after so long, i could see the stars above. their light wasn’t much, but just enough to keep on walking without losing the track. at some point the stream i followed merged with another, bigger one. they formed a little river and i continued walking by its side. when i got exhausted, it was still dark. i laid down in the grass, still a bit hard from the frost, and slept till the next morning.

5.

in my dream, utopia is my mother. she sits next to me on the bed and holds my hand while i’m falling asleep. it is probably hard for her to hold my hand for so long, hers must get really tired. she puts raspberry jam into my tea when i’m sick, and teaches me names of all flowers in her garden. when i wake up, she makes me breakfast, packs my lunchbox, and braids my hair. she pulls them so hard this time that from pain i yell, — mom, stop!!! she tells me that if she makes my braids more loose, they’re not going to hold till the end of the school day. i don’t like school, but manage to get excellent marks, although none of the subjects is interesting for me. every day i sit and wait for the classes to end. sometimes during the breaks i cry, because i miss my mother. don’t worry, the teacher says, your mom is thinking of you. but this only makes me cry harder.

in the morning, my clothes and hair were wet from the fog. i heard a bird singing, which surprised me because i hadn’t heard any sounds of life here before. my grandparents used to have a country house in an area very similar to this, with pines around and a river nearby. probably for this reason it also got foggy every morning, even in summer. the sun came out and began to heat the ground around me. the grass softened and became so comfortable that i really didn’t want to get up.

i heard the bells again and made a decision to reach the place where the sound was coming from by the end of the day. the water led me to the little town. the place looked empty. the old streets i saw seemed very familiar. while i was walking through them, i could say i knew most of the places i was passing by. the rays of light sliding along the roofs and the walls made everything look artificial. i heard children’s voices from around the corner of one house and followed them. there was a playground with an old swing, a slide, and a toy rocket made of metal tubes. they all looked too broken to be safe for kids, but i could vividly hear the voices swirling around them.

other streets began to sound, as well. i heard people talking, some of the voices seemed familiar, but i couldn’t hear them clearly enough to tell what they were talking about. i could understand only those voices that i remembered. a voice of a little girl appeared somewhere very close to me. your bracelets are so beautiful, — she said, — can you give me one? but what do you need it for? — i asked. — i will put it in my secret treasure box, — she replied, — i want to dig it down there, and she ran towards an apple tree to show me the place. i looked at my hands and realized i didn’t have any bracelets. i lost most of them when i was a kid, and had no idea where the ones i had left could possibly be.

the town was small. it felt like i knew every house. but which of them was mine? some of the buildings were abandoned and half-ruined, like the ones my high school friends and i used to climb. others, on the contrary, were theatrically new. like too neatly restored museums and churches we visited on field trips.

my utopia, apparently, is lost in time. she walks through baroque salons and glass hallways of skyscrapers. i am trying to walk in her footsteps and see her. she has long conversations with her friends, they talk about the weather and wonder why the flowers in their window gardens are not doing so well this summer. her friends are the brightest minds. they keep their books on large shelves in their beautiful homes and read them before bed. also during breakfast, and on their way to work. on a plane, on an underground train, or a boat. i don’t know what their time is like. but it feels like i am always late. when i arrive, no one is there, but utopia turns around and looks at me from the other corner of the room. i hear her smiling at me as if saying, i am happy to see you. and would she be happy there still, if i never showed up?

i didn’t know which of these buildings could be my home, and did a home need to be a building here? i didn’t know. and neither did i know how long i had to stay here. i was walking through the town trying to listen for utopia, trying to catch her words that sounded familiar. some places were silent completely, some others whispered to me quielty, showing me some places and objects that they wanted me to see.

i climbed the stairs to one of the top shelves of a new apartment complex. the flat i entered turned out to have exactly the sunset view i’d always thought of. also, it had a marble floor and warm carpets, and dim wall lights. apart from that, it was completely empty. from a window in another room i could see the town itself. it seemed like this place was designed specifically to prevent me from missing my past. there could be nothing to miss, because everything was right at my finger tips.

this ideal place without utopia seemed a bit meaningless. days passed, i spent them walking around the town and trying to find her parts. i was picking up things i once loved, and bringing them to my new home. these pieces spoke to me and as i brought them all together i could hear them louder and clearer. the flat i squatted became also the home for utopia. it was her little museum or even a shrine. she had her space in me. being stranded on an island, i didn’t have to think of just one book that i would have wanted to have. i could find any of them. she was always showing me where to look for, as i was gathering stories and tales in our bedroom library.

6.

summer heat was in full swing, and nights, once so cool and chilly, were getting unbearably hot. utopia became the only one of many voices that i could understand. she felt like an old friend, and often we talked for hours. i guess i complained too much about how senseless i had become and how tiring the heat was. the water may be attractive, she says, but it’s not a good reason to throw yourself off the cliff. i did think of jumping off the cliff, but i’d never thought i really meant it. she started looking after me, and walked me carefully wherever i went.

she was good at cheering me up. she used to be too unpredictable to rely on, but now she became attentive and present. she could even be funny. she reminded me of a girl i once met on a party. i remember i was screaming “feel” by robbie williams in karaoke and she ran through the crowd to join me at the mic. it was her favorite song, as i found out later. we were a bit too drunk to be catching up with the lines but, somehow, we managed to finish the song. in the line for the next round of drinks, she asked me if i wanted to marry her. i laughed and said, sure, why not? she gave me a plastic ring she had on her finger and i gave her a little stone i found once on the river bank and carried in my wallet. we never saw each other again after, i didn’t even ask her name or the number, but every time i think of that night i smile at how weirdly flawless love could be.

i used to love summers before, but this one seemed heavy. sometimes i felt utopia’s warm breath right behind my back. in my sleep, in the shower, on the street, in the supermarket. i could hardly ever leave home. outside was too loud and hot. some nights i’d take long walks to the river to get some water. these walks reminded me a lot of how i used to walk to the cliff to watch utopia. now, she was so near. nights like these it was hard too breathe, because the air got stuffy. with this kind of temperature, water felt like the only savior and the place to be.

utopia can come with a lightening strike. decades ago, she scared my grandma’s aunt in her little wooden house in a village and put their barn on fire, having caused her to be scared of storms for the rest of her life. what a violent thing. but she is a thunder, and the fear, and the shelter i find in it. she burns my father’s skin in the sun, she causes forest fires, she is my guiding light in the night and my nightmare. but i love this light of utopia and i tattoo her name on my chest.

one morning she woke me up shaking the ground under my bed. let’s go, she said, i found something you must see! we walked across the meadow behind my house and crossed abandoned railways. she took me to a garden. it looked like the one my parents used to have. she walked me through all the plants and flowers introducing them to me by their names. they were so many that in the end i couldn’t remember all of them. i couldn’t imagine how much attention and care she must have given to them all to let them flourish as they did. she climbed to the top of an apple tree, and said, — oh look, there’s a storm cloud coming on the town! i turned around and saw a saturated dark gray color spreading along the skyline. it was smoke, coming right from above the mountain far on the horizon, it wasn’t a storm.

the ground started to move. i remember flashes of light, then fires, then water, bloody dark red. the sky still seemed burning for the next few days. we couldn’t walk back home because of the smoke, but when we finally did, we found it a wasteland. the outlines of the streets and houses were conserved under the hardened lava. i ran immediately to my home. there was nothing left, but the view. the same view through the broken wall. all the little treasures i found and gathered, she took away. she took them and scattered into pieces again. on the floor, i saw that one little porcelain piece i had brought with me. ironically, it seemed untouched. i returned to the garden and digged it in to the soil under an apple tree.

7.

utopia turned into an island and now i live on it. this is how i know she loves me. she always keeps me in her heart.

my utopia is now a bride. i am standing in the middle of the field, the soil still dry and unrecovered. i watch her in the distance. so graceful and bright, that’s crazy! the clouds try to hide her but she lingers between them and shines through. i want to shout, to jump from happiness, and run to her, but i can’t. my voice is muted and my feet are my roots holding me to the ground. each moment i reach higher and higher up to the sky to touch her, while trying to help the earth breathe again and restore. i cannot move, so i just wait, very impatiently. i wait for her, as she moves closer and finally kisses me. though my lips have lost familiar senses, i feel her breath run through my veins. i know it in my body that i could stand tall here no matter what. because she is going to be there, right by my side, and she is keeping me safe. and i know i am going to be there to take care of her, since there’s no place else i could ever want to go.

thank you for reading this till the end!
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