Echo of the Past

30. Marcin

Translator: Schiotka

Editor: Bluwren

_________________

A few months ago, I bought a mug with gold gilt. On sale. Not as a gift, nor because of any special occasion.

Just a plain, pretty mug for 15 PLN.

I drank my coffee from it since. I spat loose tea leaves into it. It never felt particularly significant. An ordinary object. Only when I lost it, did I realise its true value.

I sat comfortably at my desk one evening. Looking down at my phone, I reached out to grab my song-text notebook. A trivial situation.

My clumsy fingers were unable to avoid the mug. They allowed it to topple over, to slip from the desktop. Even though I didn't see the split-second occurrence, I felt the pressure of unease. My head painted the trajectory of the fall on its own, the shattering, spillage. The loss.

For a millisecond I still had hope that I would be able to catch the mug, that I would be able to avoid what was about to happen. But I knew I was headed for failure. I don't have superpowers. I only scalded my fingers.

I looked at the mug's new shape for a long while, at the shattered pieces. At the spilling liquid.

Our adventure came to an end.

Irrevocably. I won't be drinking coffee from it anymore, nor spit tea leaves into it.

Well. I shouldn't be sad. It was just a regular mug, like thousands of others.

But I grew to like it; it kept me company throughout hundreds of warm drinks.

I lost it.

I hate this feeling the most.
In the moment when I am losing something, I stop in my tracks, I hold my breath. It's always a very intense moment. A short one, but one that gives me that tight, unpleasant feeling in my stomach. The feeling of loss is always accompanied by hope. Silly and naïve. Making me believe so strongly that I can make it. That I will still be able to catch the mug mid-flight.

It's only when that feeling is entering my body, crawling into me, I realise how important it was to me.

Whether it's Nivan or a stupid mug with gold gilt.

______________
Sitting on the floor, Marcin was flipping through the photographs from the square box.

His throat was choking up as he looked at their smiling faces and long stares. With his fingertips he touched Nivan's picture, and then that of the boy with the dark dreadlocks, who so easily returned Nivan to him back then.

Marcin bit down on the inside of his cheek when he realised that it wasn't Nivan who first pulled his attention at that club that night. It was him.

The boy with dreadlocks and his naked back.

He remembered the moment.

He found himself there again. He saw the coiling back and then the red long hair and suddenly it all made sense. He could fix what he'd broken in the past.

The past stomped over his body and with each new photograph Marcin felt he should close the lid of the box. Despite the feeling, he inched deeper and deeper into the thicket of revived memories that did not belong to him. He couldn't stop.

He came to regret his decision. He reached an intimate zone with naked bodies. His fingers squeezed the paper of their own volition, and envy flooded his veins.