How My Life Would Be if I Lived in Another Country?

I would wake up to the fresh sunlight cascading through the silk curtains. Dust specks performing pirouettes and whirls in the rays. The muffled sound of traffic and Charles Trenet meeting my ears, crackling with the grains of time. Round framed glasses fogging as I sip my chamomile tea, the white up button shirt loose on me.

Due to age restrictions, I see myself specializing in the area of teaching at Sorbonne University. Sitting along with the bright students of the university and scrambling away on the chalkboard and later cleaning away the chaos of a solution. I would be hiking down paths of the graveyards in Paris, with the sun at my back, slightly warming me up. A city where no one knows me, spending hours in tea shops and libraries.

Learning foreign languages, the lingering aroma of old books prominent in the room. The familiar feeling I'll never get tired of by holding a new book, the fountain pen twirling between my nimble fingers. Snuggled in the corner of a book nook, a 19th-century murderer novel in my hand, the scent of petrichor wavering around from the pelting rain.

The ebony skeleton branches of the tree scraping against the glass of the window. Clothes perfumed with the ancient musk of the unseen library I've discovered for the first time. Pale dead leaves curling past me as I sit on the bench flipping through the coffee-tinted pages, the brittle autumn breeze bringing tingling sensations.

Snow crackling under the soles of my shoes as I rush to my class with a lidded cup of simmering tea in my hand. Cheeks and nose ruddy, glasses fogging up as I greet my students, the sound of them chiming back provoking a smile to my face. Gazing around as they scribble in their papers, striving to catch up with what I'm writing on the board.

The determination of each unique student thickening in the room. I would be finding rare moments in an empty library and the wooden surface of the table pressed against my cheek.