one day in Berlin | fiction

fiction and poetry weekly

one day in Berlin

Breaking glass woke Gabriel from a dream that belonged to his arrival in Berlin. Willow trees along an embankment that offered shade from summer heat. Tanned bodies side by side beneath a cooling sky, before retreating behind the curtain of tree branches. Hot bodies, moist and willing to go further as day inched towards night. Sweet tooth eateries selling crepes and pancakes from wooden shacks to passers-by, as swans, with their s-shaped necks and tangerine bills, arrowed the waters of Landwehr Canal in pairs. Until sunset arrived, turning a Kreuzberg skyline crimson before black.  

   Bohemian individuals, each dressed in unbranded clothes bought from a local flee market gathered on small bridges. Inked skinned limbs and moustached faces sat cross legged. Conversations in various accents, accessorised by bum bags and loose denim, patterned shirts and the muted tones of Berlin. Club-Mate and German beer, kebabs and vegan ice cream. The scent of meat cooked on a skewer among various skin tones, people who moved in new directions, towards night life reflective of a city that let almost anyone in.

   How Gabriel began his time in the city, who he was when he arrived, now belonged in a past with the innocence of newness. A once boundless spirit to experience otherness now only existed in dreams that woke him to a space of needless excess. A year since his arrival in Berlin, a city where people did what they want among buildings smeared in graffiti, a city history of loss seen in the copper plaques of remembrance engrained in the asphalt, often brought Gabriel to tears when in the streets.

*

Gabriel woke slowly, sat up from a stained mattress dazed and confused. Once aware he was alive, he attempted to swallow the remains of last night’s excess until ready to vomit.

   I have no idea what I am doing with my life, he thought.

   Nausea passed like a train on a platform you were unaware was not stopping. Standing from a mattress, he moved towards a square window that gave views of high-rise apartments. Sometimes he liked to count the plants that were placed on balconies, he didn’t know why. Lighting the remains of a smoke he found stubbed out in a teacup, he listened as two punk drunks below argued over a broken bottle, until one of them fell over.   

   ‘Arschloch!’ a drunk yelled as he fell.

   Oh, think twice, it's another day for you and me in paradise, he hummed.