To Karin: The Unsent Letter

I called you my Magyar princess because of your smoldering eyes and dark hair but maybe you were just a woman who knew how to disappear while standing still. I got your number from your grandfather five years after you left on a trip to visit the Brandenburg Gate with a promise to return in the spring. A Florida area code, and a man’s voice I didn’t know picking up on the second ring. He said you were at work at the club and I wondered if he meant you were an exotic dancer. I didn’t know what to say so I held the line for a moment, listening to someone else’s breath and then let it go, setting the phone down gently as if you might still hear. I never tried calling again. Some silences are too complete for interruption, and you were always good at leaving before the questions started, so I’d learned to stop asking. I still think of you sometimes, when the light shifts a certain way. Your name drifts through me, not painful, just unfamiliar, like something once known by heart then misplaced in another room.