Stand Up to Go

12/17
Those in this city that are ignored. I noticed you.

Those who limp and frown and come from
doorways covered in white ash, who sell soft
apples with cardboard signs and gnarled feet,
who heat up dough from frozen packets and
jingle plastic lights and sleep in doorways and
benches in airports and metro corners, on church steps
and in makeshift tents with strung Christmas lights,
walking on metros for a cheque diner, selling roses in
les cafes, roasting corn by leather bags and 20 euro boots,
finding not the magic but the distress,
the cry of a baby and a stale pain au chocolat;
only the glow of the neon cafe lights on
their scarved heads and unfinished bottles, all incomplete.


12/18 Port de Dauphine

I miss them all back home but there is a part of me they will never see. The roar of cars and taxis and rumble of the metro has transformed the shy and passive me into a confidence-laden gal who knows what she wants and is not afraid to love and lose to get it. I am better.

It's okay to say goodbye.

I have taken the moments and wrapped them each with care, and they are mine and they are good and they are true. I can escape here, in my mind, when all else fails me. I can walk along the bridge to the Eiffel Tower, hear music by St. Louis, the chants of nuns, the smell of cheese and chocolate-glazed croissants and steaming coffee, pounding music and pounding heart, the stillness of rue de Vaugrigard on a Tuesday night. The peace of kids playing i the main promenade of the Luxembourg gardens. Reading in the lounge with Madame. Laughing with her. Falling in love with her. A bike ride under the stars, embraces in the metro, kisses in cars and stairwells. An openness.
I've become free.

She gets lost in the seduction of everything she can never be.

There's a woman very sad and tired with a Coke. I've never been sad holding a Coke. A guy has a Burger King crown on. A woman stares, wondering what I write.
Sometimes the humanness of it all is astounding.

---

I cry to see my parents, yet I look at the tourists and that damn tower and I cry because of the familiarity of it, the calmness and serenity in my heart when I stare at it, the way I feel walking on every avenue in this goddamn beautiful city and I am torn to pieces. I want to embrace them but I can't let go of this. I can't let go of her or these buildings or the kids on scooters or the man in all white plaster coming from a truck or the lonely on the metro or the people laughing in boucheries or in restaurants talking about life or teenagers sounding eloquent and eating a baguette and cheese in the Marais as I trip off a curb.

12/19 Luxembourg

The sun has never shone so bright. If only. I'm sure the magic would fade, but for me, there is no end. It would be nice if I felt like I had seen it all and was satisfied. But I could take the same steps for another year and still not be satisfied. Too goddamn magical.
The cascading fountain, the squall of seagulls. Tourists come and they leave and live happily, maybe never to return. So can I.
On y va, right?