Philip Gross

The count of cappuccino, the marquise of meringue, all the little cantuccini... and what was the song they sang? Oh, the best of us is nothing but a sweetening of the air, a tryst between the teeth and tongue: we meet and no one’s there though the café’s always crowded as society arrives and light glints to and fro between the eyes and rings and knives. We’ll slip away together, perfect ghosts of appetite, the balancing of ash on fire and whim—the mating flight of amaretti papers, my petite montgolfiere , our lit cage rising weightless up the lift shaft of the air. So the count of cappuccino, the marquise of not much more, consumed each other’s hunger. Then the crash. And then the war.

It's not exile, homes and families behind us, where we meet. It happens anywhere, now: a stateless state of no name, quietly seceding from the crumbling empires round us, without stamps or Eurovision entries. No-one does it with a rough guide in a week. You inhabit it or nothing. Like this: in a pavement cafe you blink and you seem to surprise them, the crowd, all its separate faces at once, coming out of solution like crystals, like a rush of starlings or the breeze that lifts the canvas awning now and dents your cappuccino froth with a crisp little sound. And that's it: between breaths, just between you and me as if; yes, QED. You are received. This is the freedom of the city, and the key to the kingdom, and its borders ripple outwards like a frill of breaking wave onto flat sand, a wavering line already fading leaving spume-flecks high and dry, a prickling on your palm; you're five years old, looking up at the whole sea, unsure: will you laugh or cry?