City and river
So you ask me why. Okay, let’s see. It is Paris and it is winter and it is raining. The old and rounded stones are slick with oil and mud and the millions of burnt corpses of abandoned cigarettes. Head down, I cross the street: hurried but still haunted by the spectre of that old man I saw being hit by a speeding cab two years ago. I hug the wall when I turn the corner and there and then and suddenly I see, again, the rising glory of the Sacre Coeur. And it’s like the first time: like all of our first times - and that’s how it was when I first saw you. So that’s what I tell you when you ask me, yet again:
“But why…?”
And it’s so funny: you still can’t wholly believe that I love you; that I fell in lust, then fell in love, mere minutes after I first saw you sitting at your table, next to the bar, praying to your laptop. So strange as well, because I still can’t truly believe that now we are here, together, in this bed. That I can touch your hair with my fingertips, that I can see your flesh as through a microscope - each detail convincingly near and perfectly clear. That my lips can reach for you and find your flesh without the slightest effort, while your fingers move through my hair and your mouth leaks soft, moist warmth upon my shoulder and your teeth will gently tug at my flesh.
You were wearing that red, whimsical blouse and a black woollen vest above practical jeans and tired, old sneakers. Later I learnt that that wonderful pendant that reached from your throat to the slow rise of your breasts once belonged to your great-grandmother.
Your left hand sought the cigarette you had abandoned minutes earlier: half of it still virgin white, the other half a perfect, grey pillar of ash. Your eyes were fixed on the screen of your laptop; your mouth half-open; your hair almost touching your slightly raised eye-brows.
You looked up and turned your head towards me - and you instantly knew all you’d ever need to know about me (even if, in these cold morning moments, you still don’t believe what your eyes and your heart and your skin knew that very first second you saw me standing there, looking at you.) Yes. I love you.
“But why…?”
Ah, my love, but to me you are that moment, when the streets are slippery and it’s raining and some taxi cab has my number - and then I turn a corner and there, yes, there you are: my Sacre Coeur, my holy heart. So it is no use now asking why; you have already bound me to you, beyond questions or arguments.
I have risen from the desert; like a ghost I travelled through the air; I crossed the sea and drifted at the mercy of the wind. Then I came upon the mountain and I clung to the rock with each drop of me, till all my strength deserted me and gravity took me down.
I trickled down to the valley, slowly finding a murmur voice, slowly learning to touch the stones and leave them with these rounded memories of soft, impersonal caresses. Going down I slowly gained some strength and learned to carry these old songs.
But all of that was nothing more than the pull and noise of gravity - until the land flattened and the clouds fell sharply towards the earth and all of me slowed down towards some strange surrender. And my strength and my voice once again abandoned me.
I slowed down to the point of dying. Stretched to some breaking point, I felt a burning shadow cover me.
And finding eyes to see, I looked beyond my skin, beyond the shadow heat into the light.
And there you stood and there you rose. Your stones and spires and the gold on your roofs and the sun in your windows and the flowering of your trees; your churches and statues and graveyards; your memories and hopes; your stories and songs.
You, you took me in and you called me your own; you called me home. You guided me through you and taught my banks to touch you - as I learnt to catch your reflections and wondrous beauty on my skin; city and river now one.