The chair is still warm, the driveway
empty as a summer bus,
I stared it down for a long time

but it never moved, even for me.
I can talk at length about your soul
after you’ve gone, but I can’t watch

it in a glass, teach it tricks, or give
it my last name. I want the driveway
to remind me of something like walking alone

through Paris while you watched it rain
from the bed of that tiny hotel room.
Paris alone in the rain is not romantic;

it’s cold, even in August and difficult to navigate
the sidewalks and bridges that hover
at street level, one story above the Seine,

its banks barricaded in slick concrete. It isn’t easy
to find the river when one is lost, unless
you toe up to the bridge and listen.