TE20 Migrant Mosaics

Ben Sloan

of my door, she will get scared and worried. And then maybe she won’t sleep well and then who knows what will happen.

Birke took her keys out began to insert her house key into the lock.

“Good afternoon Mrs. Rakoczi.”

“Good afternoon Birke.”

“Everything ok?”

“Puh! I’m getting too old for all of these stairs!”

“It’s amazing that you are still walking up these stairs after all these years.”

But Mrs. Rakoczi did not hear her. She didn’t hear very well. Her keys jangled for a brief moment. Then, she went inside her apartment. Birke needed to go inside. I am deciding to go inside now, she told herself. But then, Mrs. Rakoczi is gone. She won’t come out and find me here. Mrs. Rakoczi, who has climbed these three flights of stairs for the last twenty years, but also maybe the last two hundred years, is probably safely sitting in her chair, the same chair that she has occupied since the imperial times—a chair adorned with majestic fabric and those ornamental designs she adores, where she allows herself to briefly feel like The Empress, a beautiful Empress sought after by all the royalty in Europa. She thinks about Budapest. She misses her home. But here I am, 224