Looking for her in Paris

Hoping she’ll come home

A child nearby is looking at me, pointing me out to his embarrassed mother. Perhaps I look threatening. The mother, wearing sandals and a patterned skirt, leans into her child and pushes his arm down to his side, perhaps whispering in French, it’s rude to point.

My beard is scraggly, unkept, not trimmed in several days, wearing a linen shirt just removed from a suitcase, and sunglasses when there is no sun, only light rain.

I’m sitting under an umbrella at a small café, Shakespeare and Co., with the ruins of Notre Dame clearly visible and emotionally distressing after the fire.

Truthfully, I think it is perfectly hopeless. She will not come.

Things like this happen to people all over the world. Trying to repair love.

So, I wait. A taxi will pull up, the passenger door will open, she will swing her legs out, wearing her casual allbirds and white pants. I will not care what we do, anything would be fine, nothing is okay, too. It does not matter.

The woman sitting with the child finds what she wants in her purse, and leaves, turning the corner with the child’s hand in hers.

What if I don’t wait? What if I get the next flight to Glasgow, rent a car and be home tomorrow? No, I wait. Pride be damned. Because I was thinking about her and wanted to see her. She will like that. She might say she’s happy to see me and put her arms around me. We can go home, get next to the fire, eat Fig Newtons and just huddle.

None of these things are going to happen.

I will walk through Paris and after a while, turn over my responsibilities for others to sort out. It’s not the drink that’s the problem. It’s the inability to accept responsibility to find out who I am instead of who I’m told I should be.

If love is what I know it is, I haven’t felt its touch for what must be a small forever inside the greater one. This is not a plea for help. I’ve used them all up. I know the only actions that will change what must be changed, will have to come from me, out of me — over coffee or the next half-century, which I don’t have.

I need time. Whatever time it will take to find the courage to take me out of here.

I am head and heart tired.

Something in me needs to kindle and burn again.

Can love reach a saturation point?

We were so happy. My heart and mind full of her. No cloud of anger, no readiness to hit out, drink in, no heartaches or misunderstandings.

As long as I live, I am faithful to her. Nothing called fear can ever touch me again.

My impulse is to lie, but I’ve forgotten how badly that works for me since she came to love me.

It was strange to be a part of her life, in a place where truth is always sacred.

I promise if such a thing happens again, I will let myself bleed to death before lying.

I’m coming home, please be there. I’ll bring the Fig Newtons and new Allbirds.

Blue.