Twenty-one years ago he was traveling by train from Warsaw to Szczecin with his friends in the Corps. It was late and after a bottle or two of Żubrówka. He wanted to doze, and he somehow convinced his friends to sing to him “Asleep” by the Smiths: “Sing me to sleep. Sing me to sleep. I’m tired and I want to go to bed.” It was in the simple beauty of that moment that the thought presented itself to him: leaving Poland and the Corps could be a chance worth taking. He could return. To Texas. To Stephen. To the very possibility of a long-term relationship filled with beauty and love and respect: “I don’t want to wake up on my own anymore. Don’t feel bad for me. I want you to know deep in the cell of my heart I really want to go.”

There is another world.
There is a better world.