I puzzle you as I try to avoid stepping on the cracks of the

cobble stone streets of Paris and raise my camera to my eye to

frame a picture of the Pont de l’Archevêché and catch

lovers eating each other’s faces out in the left third of my shot.

-

Can you say “très dégoûtant”?

-

I harass my family for days about how we need to purchase a lock

from the vendors of Paris and eternally inscribe our family love onto it

with a black Sharpie from America, that would mean the world to me

and they shook their heads, not understanding why I was so enthralled with this

notion of love.

-

They didn’t know I was falling out of love in the city of love and locking my

nineteen-year-old heart’s impressions onto a bridge, but with our family name on it like a mask to cover up the unreturned love that burned in my chest each day

for two months while I wrote poems to forget him.

-

It is not until my parents leave my brother and I to wander about the Musée d’Orsay

on our own tick tock desire and dollar, where we take in the sun set and clock frame

I can recognize from a black and white photograph my mother took when she came

and I almost trip over the rope that protects a Monet—

-

“Excusez-moi!” I almost scream—

-

that I instigate a scheme to leave my mark upon Paris.

By the second to last day of our trip here, I find myself

finally sure that lover’s pain is all too real but

family blood is the only thing that escapes that scrape.

I want our name on the locks of this city, where people write

the dates that they have placed their love on the bridge

and occasionally admit a second date onto the lock

when they come back with their continued lovers.

And it is the most wonderful, lovely secret ever shared with me,

I think, as I peruse the sea of locks on either side of me, later that night,

my brother and I take the lock and key purchased for three Euros and write

our names and date on one side, leaving room for my mother and father and

other brother to find themselves and their love and put it on the lock too one day.

-

Then, we threw our key into the River Seine and I walked away

with my mark left on Paris.

Kiss me like you want to be loved tonight.
Kiss me like you want to see the stars in my eyes.
Kiss me like you want to cross the bridge to the other side.
Kiss me like you want to be loved tonight.

When I pointed out the harvest moon to him,
as it hung in the sky, blurred yellow edges
hiding behind a fog,
he laughed at me.
And as the car pulled forward, I saw the shining yellow shell
of the Shell Gas Station shine over the street.
This moon is nothing like your’s.

I find
that when people try to impress me
it all becomes the more unimpressive.
Your talent and true skill
should speak for itself,
jump off the page of your notebook
and indulge my sights with the vision
of your gift.

So when you try
to oh-so-casually remove your shirt
and change as you walk by me
sitting on your bed, reading a text
on my phone and now starting to wish
that I was home,

leave your shirt on—
show me your love.

Don’t tell me about your award from the state.
Let me find the plaque as I wander around the room,
waiting for you to come back from the stove.
Your wallet is thin, but the food is most delicious
when it’s served at your kitchen’s round table.
And as the smells creep into your bedroom
from down the hall,
I slide my fingers along the bookshelves,
pulling out yearbooks and quickly searching for your picture,
hoping to find it before you can notice
I’m not there.
That’s when I’ll find the plaque, resting on a corner of the shelve,
not even hung up.
I’ll bring it up at dinner later, ask what honorable thing you did, good sir.
And then you’ll tell me the story,
And it will be love
ly.

But rather, I’ll sit on the edge of the bed,
nestle my jacket around me tighter
and reach for the intoxication.
I must make myself drunk with something other than love tonight.
I must find the part of me that only knows moonlight, reach her,
touch her, and pull her closer to me. Embrace this new me.
I’ll breathe in her breaths and then press them onto your lips.
And I will forget that this is not love and this is not safe
but I left that harvest moon in another state.

Wind, capture my soul—

pass through me,

brush shoulders with the crowd of tourists and locals

who meander through the clock tower plaza,

wishing to claim their connection

to a place they learned about in a History class

-

a few years back.

There must be more.

-

Salt, clean my nostrils of any hate—

the air fills me up, lifting me away,

And I feel weight-

less,

like I’m about to arrive

in the freshest of places, the greenest of spaces.

-

I am a tourist myself, yet my mind is cleaner

—but please, don’t take my comments as hate,

rather just distance from their kind—

and it’s this slate that the sea wipes

again and again with each foamy breath

like the gallops a freed horse makes

in the fields of this same island

-

a few years back.

There is something more.

-

A grass blade, a bead of sand, a drop of the ocean’s

water in your hands, seeping between the cracks

of this world’s distaste.

I have begun to wonder how lovely freedom must taste,

particularly on the tongues of those opposed,

denied of the wooden planks that could carry them home,

of the ocean’s kissing that lets them float and imagine

that there is something more.

-

Whisper me to that sea.

Salty breaths enlighten me.

Feel my breath as it smoothes over the nape of your neck
like a fog, misting our windshields as we forget our sense.
We are the closest to dependence in this small world here,
than we will ever be in a Hyde Park bench relationship.

I sent a letter to somebody once.

People thought I was very strange.

Maybe for writing out my thoughts and admitting I was

hurting and that I kept rewriting the words he said to me

in my head. Engraved in my memory and new memories

were the words he said

and the ones I didn’t.

I think of you when the medication hasn’t hit me yet,

when the pills are starting to run low in count,

and the bottle is still resting on the counter, unopened.

-

I like to feel sometimes,

it’s a bad habit of mine.

It lets you back into my mind.

-

The pills take you away,

but sometimes I want you to stay,

so I make the pills stay in the bottle.

-

But that’s irresponsible,

it’s something illogical,

and I only let it happen once every moon cycle.

-

I reach my hands up towards empty space,

as I lie in my bed, it’s late, almost 1 AM.

I imagine that your hand is reaching back,

like we’re on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.

-

You are a painting to me now,

that I can admire but never touch again,

unless spirits and fate bring us back together,

but I’ve learned to stop dreaming like that.

Reality has kicked in.

-

I never thought it would.

I never thought any of it would

ever make sense to me.

And the day that it did,

I stopped relying on the bottles,

and let myself feel pain for one last time.

Then I swallowed the pill,

let it rest on my tongue, stinging its taste

into my memory,

so I would remember to not do this again.

I would remember to not remember you,

and to keep the lid off the bottle next time.