Last week I went to Heidelberg.

I had to see it once, this town of shattered dreams.

Thursday. I stand in Heidelberg station,

Experiencing a moment of blind panic

As I pursue your address through the fog of years.

Finally I catch it, and too soon find myself standing in front of your house.

What am I doing here? I know I am too late.

There is nothing in Heidelberg which belongs to me.

I must go home.

As I turn to stumble back to the station, a man comes towards me.

I freeze.

For he looks how you would look, were you all grown up.

Who can he be, this balding, middle-aged man, who has stolen your eyes?

“Excuse me please,” I say breathlessly.

“I’m a foreigner here. Can you direct me to the bus station?”

As soon as the stranger opens his mouth, I recognise his voice.

It is you, then.

You stand here in front of me, without knowing who I am,

And explain to me the whereabouts of a bus shelter.

I don’t want you to stop speaking.

I have waited an entire lifetime for this moment, and it needs to last forever.

“Do you have the time, please?” I ask desperately,

For what else remains to be said between us?

And you, who wiped me from your life twenty years ago,

Stare at me in confusion and ask yourself absently

Why this strange, foreign woman is beginning to cry

As you inform her it is already quarter to three.

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