Sep 2013
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.
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.
