Ten Days From Home
low roof tops like castles crowd the skyline
music wafts out of train cars
this is a story book place
everyone, from everywhere has gathered here
walking along the streets of Paris
I am watching
ten days ago other countries
were nothing more than stories told on the news
and French was a language only spoken in the classroom
I am walking
walking in the Latin Quarter with dinner in hand and the vibrant knowledge
that I am somewhere that I have never been
and may never be again
dancing in the kitchen of my hosts
white knuckled in the passenger seat
and wondering how I could ever leave
I am seeing things I can only see here
looking down on the river with my host mother
in a castle older than my country
I am speechless in two languages
as we round the corner
tired and soaked by rainfall
to the symbol of everything we have experienced
the Eiffel Tower
when I am underneath and in line and in every picture I took of it
I am flooded by the realization that I am a foreigner too
standing shoulder to shoulder
with a man who knows nothing of me
a woman who does not speak my language
I feel lovingly lost
and at midnight
when the sun has crawled back towards home
I am waiting for this to topple over and become fictional again
I am writing it all down before my memory is lost in the Seine
our last night on the boat
I stare at everything as it evaporates around me
I stand and exist for everything
while Parisian men play music in the Metro
I am transported to cobblestone streets flooded by foreigners
and I am overtaken by the opposite of homesickness
when I think back it is like a movie of someone else’s life
and I am awestruck by the reality of it
I was there