how many days have to pass before missing you doesn’t feel like getting socked in the chest with a baseball bat?
how many of your photos do i need to tape to my wall before it feels like you’re still sitting across from me, in your red sweater, with your brown curls?
how often will i keep telling strangers about you as if they’d met you?
forever, probably. the word is permanently parked on the tip of my tongue.
this constant orbit around the idea of you is just the side effect of loving someone enough they start to live in the in-between moments. the longing hits hardest when it’s quiet.
let me tell you about last night.
week two in paris.
you always loved this city - i remember that. and now, apparently, so do i
i left the house not planning on feeling anything besides my overly uncomfortable shoes i wear for the sacrifice of having good style, and the slightest bit of regret over not bringing a proper jacket.
i wore just enough perfume to feel like a person. i had no plans, and deifnitely no expectations.
it was essentially one of those nights you leave the house because the walls feel weird and your legs feel restless.
i met a young man in a café in the 17th arrondissement.
we both drank herbal tea at nine o'clock, from little white cups with gold rims.
you know i never think far ahead when it comes to men.
i don’t connect easily with them, my emotions falter. i tend to let my attempts die quietly before they begin.
but he had a calmness to him, and i was quite nosy.
his face was unassuming, like he had nothing to prove.
it made me feel uneasy, but this is a blog about doing new things, is it not?
his lashes were quite long, his fingers unnaturally straight. they held the porcelain cup with the poise of a musician, or a painter. he held nothing with force, yet he was neither.
(excuse the poetic interlude, you know i can never help myself)
there was a dimple on his right cheek. i don’t know if there was one on the left, i didn’t look.
but his hands, i kept returning to them. how many stories they had carried, i kept wondering.
we spoke of our families. of city life. of marseille and versailles.
of art and videography.
after two hours he asked if i wanted to see the city.
i nodded.
by then my logical brain had clocked out early.
no risk analysis. no pre-game anxiety. just the rationale that let my emotions be for once.
i was soft, like clay, i like to think.
yesterday and tomorrow felt like rumors. and i dislike rumors.
still, i could hear my roommate in the back of my head,
she's portuguese, wise, and deeply suspicious of emotionally literate french men.
she says depth gets lost in translation. like the vulnerability gets stuck between “je t’aime” and “do you want to split the check?”
but that night, you were with me, undeniably so. i know you were.
we stopped by a moped.
and i swear - never in my 21 (and eleven-twelfths) years on earth have i ever felt so close to you.
he didn’t know, of course, but maybe something in my face gave it away. something quiet and raw and a little bit time-warped.
you must understand, dear reader,
my grandmother told the same story all her life. when i was ten, twelve, fifteen and again when i was twenty, and likely a lot more times that find their place in between.
she once rode through london on the back of a moped with a man whose name she never told me. she was seventeen. living in a house that permitted her service but not her presence. she ate alone in the kitchen and kept her dresses pressed. but that night, she belonged to herself. i never understood. until this night, when she nudged her story right into the reality of my life.
it was cold for a summer evening, elke, but i hadn’t felt so warm in my heart in a long, long time. it was the night of a big football match. the streets had swelled with people. bars overflowed with voices, music shifted with each corner we turned, like i was skipping too quickly through a playlist.
place de clichy, boys in jerseys and colorful scarves laughing loudly, my eyes counting balconies, and art deco storefronts.
moulin rouge, women with glittering cheeks, short dresses, purple feather clips in their hair and cigarettes in their perfectly manicured fingers.
montmartre, strings of lights, houses that looked like theater sets,
clubs with glass fronts, people kissing beneath strobe lights,
and stepping outside to breathe again.
at midnight, we reached sacré-cœur. paris had won, fireworks all over the rooftops. you would’ve cried watching it.
and no, dear reader,
he didn’t ask me to come home with him. i slept in my own room, with frozen fingers and warm, warm memories. he simply serves as the metaphor for this story.
it was beautiful, elke. but more than that,
i get it now, what you meant. i have paris like you had london.
and you live in every detail i bother to notice.
i carry you, on the nights i scream-laugh. and the ones where i’m laying in bed pretending to be okay with the future. when i look at the photo of you i have framed on my nightstand.