I was a different person by the time Solaris returned from his interview. And it wasn't just the 3 cups of coffee talking!
A Bridge Between
Once upon a time there was a girl with no country. She had been born to a country. She had even called two separate countries home, but when the time came to choose one, neither wanted her. Her birth country said her name wasn't on the guest list, and her husband's country said she was just an immigrant. Thus alone, her husband sought approval to return to the girl's home country whilst likewise alone she sat in a Starbucks nearby and wished him good tidings, courage, and hope.
She felt too small and adrift between the two nations to stand outside her birth country's embassy, powerless to enter and be among her own people. The gates were so big, and she was so small - so absolutely minuscule in fact that she was sure neither country would even notice if she were there.
At least there in the Starbucks, she could be out of the biting wind that seemed to mock how alien she was to this place, this country, and its weather. There she could quietly sip her drink in a warm corner and for a moment forget how different and ostracised she sometimes felt because there were the same cookies and muffins and coffee jargon as the Starbucks in her birth country. It smelled of after dinner excursions with her mother and brown wax paper bags with gigantic chocolate chip cookies or lemon pound cake tucked neatly inside. It was a place made of memories from when she had not only called a country home but also when one had called her its countryman.
No, it didn't hurt so much there, but still she could feel the distance. Across from her, several more people between countries sat awaiting word. She sympathized deeply but could still not shake the feeling of being absolutely adrift and alone. It kept coming back to that sensation, actually - being adrift without a country to belong to. And somewhere down the street, her husband was putting himself through practically the same. For her, he had stepped from his birth country into her own, tried to join her there, and yet was now having to do it by himself.
In a way, they were both without countries. The girl who had none would never again be the same girl who had first immigrated, and her husband would never again be the same boy who brought her there, regardless of whether or not he too relocated and left his own birth country.
But then... perhaps they weren't adrift so much as they were a bridge between their two countries of birth. And perhaps they weren't alien so much as a new creation - a fusion of two cultures, two histories, two countries. Perhaps in having neither country entirely, they really had both.
Once there was a girl who fell in love with a boy, and he fell in love with her. An ocean separated their paths but somehow they traversed the distance, bridged the gap, and built a life together.
Between them, they may have had two countries, but in each other they had one home.
