She approached the first border, holding a suitcase in one hand, packed with fragments of memories from different years of her life, and in the other — words, fragile as eggshells and sharp as fish bones.
She was fleeing a war where words were as dangerous as weapons. In her city, the streets were filled with smoke and silence. She wasn’t running because she wanted a new life, but because staying meant silence and endless fear.
The people in line ahead of her hurriedly and greedily stuffed words into their pockets, like contraband. The emigrants whispered, exchanging information: what questions they might ask at the border, what the process was like, how much it hurt. They shared chilling stories and tales of success. The border guards watched them, looking like students before an exam, and smiled condescendingly. When the light above a border control booth turned green, the guards grabbed another pale, fear-stricken emigrant and roughly dragged them inside. Some were pulled by force, their clothes tearing, and the words they had so carefully hidden scattered on the floor, left lying there like beads before the border booths.
She walked in by herself. The heavy door slammed shut, and the electronic buzz of the lock confirmed there was no way back. The light inside was red, unbearably bright and unfamiliar to her eyes. It took her a few seconds to collect herself and take in the space.
Behind an iron desk sat a tall man in a white uniform, his hands resting calmly on the table, like stones on a riverbed. Tiny drops of fresh blood dotted his cuffs, so small they might have been mistaken for dew on petals. She imagined the dew mixing with pollen and turning red. For a moment, she felt the suffocating smell of rotten lilies. She knew: it wasn’t dew on the guard’s cuffs — it was words. Words soaked in pain, longing, and fear. Sometimes drops rolled off the cuffs, turning into beads, bouncing on the metal table and falling off its edge. The floor was covered in these small, shining red beads.
Behind the guard stood a bucket, exuding a sharp smell of cinnamon and copper. In it lay crimson tongues, taken from those who crossed the border before her. Some tongues twitched occasionally, glowing as though encrusted with words, casting flecks of light on the walls of the booth. Others lay still — they were tired of speaking, had lost faith in their words. The light seemed to be swallowed by their resigned silence. They accepted their guilt, leaving it behind in the country where silence and inaction had long been traded for temporary stability.
Her tongue hid behind her teeth, scared, like a fish caught in a net. She knew it was time to surrender it. She knew all the violence and pain were behind her. What was about to happen now was nothing more than a formality.
“It’s easier to cross borders without a tongue,” the man said, his voice smooth as the surface of a frozen lake.
She nodded. Unclenched her lips. Her tongue, pink and alive, obediently slid from her mouth. It fell onto the metal with a wet slap, and a million crimson beads danced across the table alongside it. For a moment, she thought the tongue quivered, as if it wanted to say one last word, and she heard its rhymes in the beads striking the metal. But the air was already empty.
The man in white carefully lifted her tongue with two fingers and laid it in his palm.
“A beautiful one. I’ve never seen one like this. Are you sure you want to cross the border and give it up?” He stroked the back of the tongue with his fingertip, and she felt a tickle. The tongue contracted, and a few more beads fell from its tip. She nodded resolutely.
The guard tickled the tongue once more, hid his smile, and indifferently tossed it into the bucket’s sticky silence.
She wanted to feel her new mouth, but realized she had no way to do so. Her mouth was now an empty cavern, echoing with her new, silent freedom.
The guard stamped her papers, and the door to the other side opened.
***
She found a room in an old house. The walls were covered in faded wallpaper with patterns that looked like tear stains. She bent over a pile of documents.
“Confirm your income,” the realtor said dryly. “Do you have a guarantor?”
She shook her head, clutching her passport.
“There’s no one here but me.”
The realtor sighed and handed her the keys.
“Try not to be late with the rent.”
She nodded, though she wasn’t sure she’d find work by next month.
***
When she moved to this country, everything seemed simple. The city was old but cozy: cobbled streets, tiny cafés scented with fresh bread and chocolate, ancient parks where the trees knew more than the people. She was building a new life here — slowly, cautiously.
Sometimes she met compatriots: in stores, at bus stops, by the post office. They’d study her face for a long moment, and once they were sure, they relaxed.
One day, she stood in line at the bank. Behind her, a man in his fifties with a deep furrow between his brows quietly spoke to a woman — presumably his wife.
“I keep thinking about those... stones... What are they called? Stones that get in the way...”
The woman frowned, trying to remember.
“What stones?”
He spread his hands, shaking his head in frustration.
“Obstacles, stumbling stones, no! Something else!”
She turned and offered:
“Stumbling blocks or hidden pitfalls?”
He exhaled with relief.
“That’s it! Stumbling blocks. It slipped my mind, can you believe it? Used to remember things like that even in my sleep. And now...”
He looked down, embarrassed by his forgetting.
“There are too many words. Too many new ones,” the woman beside him added. “No room left for the old ones.”
She looked at them and felt something tug deep inside. Words that had once been her support were now stumbling blocks themselves. How did beads bounce off the table, strike, and rise again? Balance? Leap? Scatter? No, those weren’t the right words. There was a precise one. But she couldn’t remember it.
“As long as not all the stones are lost,” she whispered to herself.
The man heard and smirked:
“Yeah, hope something stays for memory’s sake.”
Later, as she walked home, her fingers unconsciously counted lines in her mind, like prayer beads. She recalled forgotten phrases, idioms that once rolled off the tongue. Adults used to say them; you read them in books, heard them in the streets. Now she kept them only in her head, like a copy that never grew, only faded.
“What stones will I forget tomorrow?” she wondered.
But another thought came quickly: “Maybe it doesn’t matter if you forget the stones, as long as you still remember the road.”
***
She drank her morning coffee just as she had back home. But now her mind was free of meanings; she no longer caught the stray fragments of conversation from passersby. At neighboring tables, voices intertwined like tangled threads, each thread a labyrinth with no way out.
Beneath the surface, however, a quiet anxiety simmered, one no one wanted to acknowledge. The news grew more alarming, but people turned away from it, swatting it away like an annoying mosquito. She turned away, too, hoping that by not looking, the problem would vanish.
***
She befriended an elderly woman from the neighboring house.
Every morning, the old lady placed a bowl of apples on her windowsill — rosy, with tiny speckles on the skin, as if they had just fallen from a tree. Sometimes she fed the pigeons or spoke softly with the neighborhood children. Her voice was like old lace — a little worn, but still elegant. She spoke with an accent, one that felt both pleasant and familiar.
One morning, on her way back from the store, the woman stopped her at the entrance.
“Dear, take an apple. We have so many in the garden this year,” she said, offering a yellow-red fruit.
She took the apple, feeling its coolness and rough texture under her fingers. For a moment, she imagined standing again in her grandmother’s orchard, where the wind smelled of leaves and autumn.
“Thank you,” she smiled. “It’s beautiful.”
The old woman nodded, her gaze fixed on her.
“Beauty is in the simple things, dear. But sometimes, the simple things are the hardest to grasp.”
***
“How are the apples?” the old woman asked when they met by the mailboxes.
“Juicy. They reminded me of home.”
“It’s good when something reminds you of home,” the old woman said, looking somewhere beyond the walls of the building, as if searching for her own past.
From then on, their exchanges became small rituals. She would take an apple, thank her, and they would exchange a few words about the weather or grocery prices. The words were simple, but they warmed her — as if the world still had room for kindness.
***
One morning, the city woke up different. Instead of calm voices behind walls, there were shouts. Instead of the familiar hum of traffic, there was the distant roar of gunfire. She stepped out onto the balcony and saw a column of black smoke rising in the distance. The smoke drifted across the sky, mingling with the clouds, as if trying to hide what was happening below.
The stores ran out of goods. Banks closed. Neighbors began to look at each other with suspicion. The old woman’s smile, once offered with an apple, had turned into a thin line.
“Take care of yourself, dear,” the woman said, without meeting her eyes.
The next day, there were no apples on the windowsill, and no one felt like talking. But she still decided to glance into the window, hoping to see the kind face of the old woman and wave.
Inside the room, strangers stood. A young man with eyes the same shade of blue as the old woman’s wept, his face buried in his hands. A bottle of strong liquor sat on the table, surrounded by scattered papers.
In that moment, the world turned cold and complicated again, reminding her of home more than ever before.
Everything unraveled quickly after that. She tried to leave by train, but the trains no longer ran. Buses filled up so fast that people clung to the steps, hanging from the open doors.
***
At the border, a young guard with weary eyes looked at her.
“Purpose of your visit?”
She sighed.
“Tourism.”
“Anything to declare?”
“Nothing.”
He nodded and waved her through.
The door opened. She stepped forward.
Once again, she complied. Left another piece of memory, another fragment of her soul behind.
The door closed softly behind her, as if nothing had happened.
She rented a bright apartment in a new neighborhood. Tall windows, modern interiors, and morning light that slid gently across polished floors. Here, coziness was part of the design, and order was the standard. A calendar with local landmarks and holidays hung on the wall, but she never turned the pages.
***
Every morning started the same way. She visited the coffee shop on the corner, where the air smelled of fresh pastries and roasting coffee. The barista greeted her with a familiar smile:
“The usual?”
“Yes, the usual,” she replied.
That “usual” anchored her. The coffee was bitter, like the memory of when every morning brought something new. Sometimes the barista tried to strike up a conversation:
“You know, we have live music on Friday. It’ll be fun. Maybe you’ll come?”
She smiled.
“Maybe.”
But she never asked for details or remembered the date. His words skimmed the surface of her mind and slipped away, leaving no trace. She took her coffee, sat by the window, and watched the passersby. Their faces, their movements — all of it a backdrop she didn’t try to focus on.
***
Sometimes she agreed to meet people. In the evening, at the same café, someone would ask to join her table.
“Mind if I sit here?”
“Of course,” she’d reply, her smile genuine, but shallow.
They talked about the city, favorite spots, events. She listened attentively, even asked questions:
“Where’s the best place to walk? Which café is the coziest?”
But when they shared their answers, she nodded, thanked them, and forgot. The information slipped past her like water through her fingers.
“Did you visit that park I mentioned?” a companion might ask a week later.
“No, I haven’t made it there yet,” she’d say with a hint of regret, not explaining that going there felt like trying to start a new life.
She didn’t avoid people, didn’t hide from them. She just couldn’t let these encounters root themselves in her memory. New names, new places, new habits demanded energy she didn’t have.
She wasn’t afraid of the new; she was simply tired.
***
One evening, she returned home and stared at the walls of her apartment. Perfect, with no cracks, no stains. They reminded her of a world that left no room for the real — with all its flaws and pain.
She wandered through the rooms: the kitchen, where no pot ever boiled over. The living room, where no friends ever laughed. The bedroom, where every morning started just like the last.
This country didn’t notice her presence. And what did her presence even mean?
***
The third border was endless. Again and again, they asked her to leave something behind: a part of her story, a part of herself. She no longer remembered who she was before the escape.
She crossed borders, hoping the next would be the last. But behind every door was another door.
One day, she stood before yet another border guard. He looked at her closely and asked:
“What do you want to leave behind now?”
She looked inside herself and found nothing. No voice, no memory, no face. She was an empty vessel, transparent as glass. She smiled — the smile of someone who no longer knows what pain is.
“I have nothing left to leave,” she whispered.
The guard silently opened the door. She stepped forward and dissolved into the void.
