Paris: immutable
permanent marker
dream.

I love you like
the giddy sparkle-crack,
irrational love
found in picture-book fairy tales
I outgrew by
13. You are
my desperate idealism
romanticized into sepia wallpaper
on my laptop screen so
hi there.
Hi, Eiffel Tower.
I think I know your contours
better than a man knows the outlines of his lover but
Paris.
My feelings run
still.
Stiller than still, like
blood gone cold
in love's deep-freeze,
I'm fixated.

Paris, you've got
a residence permit
without an expiration
date
to live in the red beating
city
within me
where no boy has ever kept up his rent and
what,
           what
what does that say about me?
That I reach out my arms to
a rose-tinted Google image
rather than a
tangible embrace waiting for me at my
locker every day.

Why can I serenade you
but not even speak about him?

Paris, I don't think...
I don't think I should love you so
fairly.
For you are my soul investment
but we won't breakeven.
And they warned me,
Paris, they warned me
that you are most beautiful in the rain.
How gorgeous, how
dangerous,
in this age of acidity.

You do not need me
when countless 'artistes'
make love to you
on camera rolls, ivory keys, second-hand
typewriters of silk-faced men.
You do not need me.
Even history has shaped you
into an evenly symmetrical heart
on the map.
You do not need me
but I gorge myself on your
romance
to keep me sane.

Who needs therapy when there's the Champs-Elysées?

And I know that you're crumbling
like, God, yes, the pastries in your abandoned patisseries. I
know that you're crumbling
beneath pink candy wrappers and Casablanca
scene imitations so
that's why
they say you disappoint.

My aunt had a suite at the Ritz but
emailed to tell me
about the soot-stained post office
on rue-this or rue-that and
what,
         what,
what does that say about you?

Is that why they took
all the locks off your eternal bridge,
discarded each love-tale
attached to your hinges
because you were
                               heaving?
Vomiting out love because
it was over-indulgence, like
you'd stuffed yourself on red velvet cupcakes
to find you couldn't digest all that romance and
Paris,

I'm holding you tightly.

My feelings irrationally match
with some product with a price-sticker that reads
'true love'.
Did I tell you I cherish your flaws?
The smoke snuck on buildings and
vines like
veins
bleeding honeysuckles onto windowpanes
and brusque sandwich orders
in some seedy cafe.

I want to crawl
into your chinks and spaces,
make little dark coves
in each little gap where
I can sit and
read.
I can read.

I can read you.

Paris, you are
the postcard that never
came in the mail
but I somehow found
in an empty drawer one day and
I love you.

Paris, I love you.
I'm writing it now but
in some beautiful future,
I'll tell you in person.