Summertime In Budapest

By Emmeline Armitage

We were circus-bound at Széchenyi

Hair still dripping from the baths

With nothing better to do

For want, nor love, nor money

Rather, day-old popcorn and magic in a language we didn’t understand.

Five tickets please, in your upper circle

To join the frieze of tourists, circulate our ideas about the economy

And why my vomit stain had kept on the apartment steps.

Harsh chatter led to amused guessing games

Of I-spy the trap door

Or who gave eyes to whom?

And would there be lions, or tigers, or bears?

When from the corner of our eyes

The ring-master tripped the light

Hushing our shaky hearts

From last night’s brush with Dreher in a rune bar

To fizzle and sink into suspense.

With pulse and minor fanfare

Out she waltzed, the opening act

To a floating ball in electric blue

And with both her feet pointed in near prose began to juggle

To run against the grain of rubber

And stack fire, high into the air at simple command.

Just for a moment we were entranced

Fallen foreign to our surroundings

Blessed by an image of disbelief that carried with it no moral high ground

Jaws unlocked and catching air.

Until in a near second, her feet began to slip

The ball escaping from beneath her

Embarrassing the ground with shock and thud.

And there she laid, splayed out on the floor

For all to point, and prod, and ruminate.

Then there was a new silence, an understanding

As the room learnt of universality in translation

Of how to say taxi in Hungarian

And oops in mother tongue.

It was only then our imaginations were lit

For we could watch that show knowing it might all end in an instant

That this bliss led the way to that chaos

With just one small slip of a foot.