{"id":26444,"date":"2026-06-18T14:55:00","date_gmt":"2026-06-18T12:55:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/stadtsprachen.de\/de\/?post_type=stsp_text&p=26444"},"modified":"2026-06-18T16:07:59","modified_gmt":"2026-06-18T14:07:59","slug":"when-in-doubt-look-for-a-butterfly","status":"publish","type":"stsp_text","link":"https:\/\/stadtsprachen.de\/en\/text\/when-in-doubt-look-for-a-butterfly\/","title":{"rendered":"When in Doubt, Look for a Butterfly"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

(This text is part of a Trilogy. You can find the first two parts here: Part 1<\/a> Part 2<\/a> )<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

2023<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The heartache was racking. It was not just the storm outside, the cold Berlin night, and the prospect of spending it in a new, shoebox apartment where I hadn\u2019t even moved my belongings, that made me feel that way. Surrounded by crates and piles of things, I sobbed. I wanted to be one with the floor, find a small dent in the wood, and hide there with all my misery. The floor smelled like fresh pine. It felt soft against my back. I felt like sinking in it. I laid there for a while. My partner wasn’t returning, and I couldn’t go back to our old home. Despite our breakup months ago, we’d still shared the same roof for a while. It was only in the confines of my newly rented, tiny attic apartment that reality finally hit me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I gazed out through the window, as if the sky, pitch black and starless, possessed some magical ability to give my life a much-needed plot-twist. \u201cIf I am to move on from this, show me a butterfly in the next forty-eight hours.\u201d And, if I was not to move past it, and still needed to endure and perhaps get back with my ex, then the Universe was to show me something else. As my mind searched for what that something else could be, the phone rang. A friend was trying to convince me to meet her. I made up a chain of excuses. She pressed. It was Friday night.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the pub, I told her: \u201cI won\u2019t ever have sex again.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I wanted to return to my apartment and continue to die on the floor. But her optimism nearly won me over. \u201cTonight, you will see!\u201d She pointed at a man nursing a drink at the bar, chatting with the bar keeper. \u201cHe has been looking at you,\u201d she said. \u201cI have a feeling; I think he\u2019s your soulmate or something.\u201d I told my friend I was going home, but she pushed me to go get another drink. I was now less than an arm\u2019s length close to the man at the bar. I asked for a wine spritzer, in German, and waited. I eyed my friend, implying it was nonsense, and thought to myself I\u2019ll pay for the drink and go home.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then, he spoke. He had a pleasant voice. He told me he was from Pennsylvania, and that the pub was his old favourite in Berlin. He said he didn\u2019t speak German. \u201cNeither do I,\u201d I reckoned, alluding to my birthplace. \u201cThen you must be from the part of Romania where they don\u2019t speak German.\u201d Clever, I thought. I went back to my friend and told her I didn\u2019t like his grey socks tucked in brown shoes. But I was open to at least having a conversation. Eventually he came and sat with us. The conversation, to my surprise, flowed, and after some time, my friend decided it was safe to leave us to ourselves. Christopher was a scholar who liked to talk about anything. He was a cultured, humble, refreshing companion. I could tell he was attempting to put me at ease and conceal his own nervousness. He felt at home in Europe and had a penchant for Vienna, where he lived six months a year, as his visa allowed. He was visiting Berlin to meet old friends before returning to New York.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As it became more apparent that we had a lot of topics in common, we headed to a bar called Melody Nelson. At 2.22 in the morning, he leaned over and kissed me. It was the second of February 2020. We stayed up talking until the morning hours, when we arrived at my place and crashed next to each other on the mattress. The pine-scented floor underneath suddenly felt warm and welcoming. He made us a breakfast consisting of French omelette and blueberries, and liaised with my landlord, Dino, a sturdy construction worker from Strausberg, to assemble my kitchen table. Dino thought Christopher was my partner. In the next two weeks, we started to warm up to that idea ourselves. We spent the afternoons like tourists, falling for each other and for the city\u2019s unnatural grace despite the grey days and cold nights. He took me to jazz concerts, and I took him to all the art museums. There was a strangely comfortable feeling of \u2018Our house\u2019, and then there were our fears. Vulnerability found its way through the rose-tinted glasses and in the days before his leave to New York, I caved to my inability and unwillingness to suffer the impending loss of our newly started affair. I told him I couldn\u2019t do long-distance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Christopher said he was trying hard not to fall in love with me, and I shared that sentiment. Our accidental meeting and the circumstances of our lives on different continents, the unprocessed baggage of our previous relationships, made it very difficult to believe it could work. He gifted me a copy of Barnes\u2019 The noise of time,<\/em> and I slipped a hardcover of Chris Kraus\u2019 I love Dick<\/em> in his backpack the day he left. I would have liked to say \u2018I love you,\u2019 instead, but neither of us dared to utter those words. It was too early for that. Yet, we were already attached to one another, which didn\u2019t make it less real or painful to recognize the improbability of a functional long-term relationship. We made plans to meet in Berlin once again in three months, while my friend and I had the spontaneous idea to visit New York that spring. \u201cYou are a beautiful person,\u201d he said, kissed my forehead, and hopped on a train to the airport. I went home and waited to hear he reached New York safe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Five days later, several states entered lockdown. Christopher didn\u2019t make it to New York. He fell ill on the way, and remained stranded in Pennsylvania, at his parents\u2019 home, for the next two years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Throughout confinement, I listened a lot to Edith Piaf. Edith Piaf also loved someone in Berlin. Berlin means nothing to Edith Piaf, though. Or maybe it means everything. Even under Berlin’s dirty skies, she found eternity in a moment, with a certain man. And then, because she is Edith Piaf, and doesn’t live happily ever after, it all ends. Christopher and I decided to break up when it became obvious that the borders would indefinitely remain closed. We broke up on Skype, which was as deflating as a statistic. It was April, and the empty streets gave way to the irreverence of nature in bloom, with cherry blossoms and lilacs sprouting everywhere. I stopped seeing airplanes from my attic window. Everything was very silent. The world had stopped. I received a grant for a pandemic-themed art residency and threw myself into work. He focused on his family and writing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We never met again, and nearly one year passed before we reconnected, and clumsily turned our initial romance into a literary friendship. For the longest time, we had been the last people each of us touched, and there was a tenderness to it, albeit a punitive one. The absence felt strange and suffocating. I had lost not one person I loved, but two. The grief from my previous relationship and that of a new love cut short grew and unravelled, begging for my care. I carried the grief with me like a small child, sat in that imminent loneliness and disconnection from familiarity, closeness and touch, and the year turned very much into one of magical thinking.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Melody Nelson closed in July 2021. I was sad to have lost the very place of our first kiss. So, one Monday after work, I went to have a Bloody Mary at Z Bar, the pub where I originally met Christopher. It was quiet. The pub owner and I were the only people there. He remembered me and Christopher. We talked about the meaning of life in those moments. \u201cWe need more love stories,\u201d he said. \u201cWe had many love stories with Berlin and in Berlin, even if most of them ended. Many of the old places closed, and some of the people went away or simply out of sight.\u201d I replied that what remained were good friends, some places, and the memories. I thought of the numerous emails Christopher and I wrote each other to preserve the memories, enough to fill an anthology. Everything is replaced over time by something else, though: the sadness of the world, and even the sadness of that night when, lingering on the floor, I asked the Universe for a sign to help me move away from heartbreak. The pub owner played music, and for some reason, that released movement in my body. I started dancing by myself. I pictured a day when I could throw a big party at home, where all my friends, old lovers, pen pals and parents all finally came together, celebrating the end of the global catastrophe we were in. I imagined the whole scene and kept dancing, in a trance-like state, until the voice of Edith Piaf broke, as if out of nowhere, as songs usually do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201aNon, je ne regrette rien\u2018<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I gazed at the empty pub, washed in the golden hour, and envisioned Christopher sitting across from my friend the night we very first met. A seemingly forgotten detail popped in my mind.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhat is this?\u201d he then asked, pointing at a tattoo on her wrist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a butterfly!\u201d my friend exclaimed. My face illuminated, as if it was struck by a dash of the divine. My heart had been like a cocoon that survived, specifically because it was torn open. Our story was short lived, like a butterfly, but I regretted nothing. I smiled. My prayer to the Universe had been completely heard and answered, and if it happened then, it could happen again, if only I let it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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