29 Days of August

AUGUST 8, PARIS

We lean against the railing on the landing of Le Train Bleu. Below a flood of Parisians enters the Gare de Lyon to depart for the south. Parallel quais recede in the distance. The sun filters in through the station’s glass roof.

AUGUST 7, PARIS

You have the keys to a chambre de bonne on Rue de la Rochefoucauld. Exposed beams. Endless vista of roof tops.

I watch you sleeping, naked in the heat.

I pull your scarf from the table and run it across your shoulders, down your back, across your…

AUGUST 6, ROAD TO PARIS

I stand in front of the hotel and wait for you to bring the car around.

Something is really wrong or really right. Otherwise, I wouldn’t let you behind the wheel.

AUGUST 5, LE TREPORT

Languorous morning. Pebble beach south of the light house. Cliffs above. We lay on a woolen blanket that we spirited out of the hotel.

My lip is swollen and aches from yesterday’s bite.

AUGUST 4, ROAD TO LE TREPORT

Red light district at 5 am, mostly vacant. Windows framed by the glare of neon tubes: Empty chairs. Generic interiors.

We pass a lone prostitute, dressed as a school girl, bathed in the blue neon of her shop window.

AUGUST 3, AMSTERDAM

Last night, I read you the introduction to ‘Against the Grain’.

We laughed at the protagonist, des Esseintes, who wished to flee the banality of daily existence. I paced back and forth in the cabin.

AUGUST 2, AMSTERDAM

Early morning, unbrushed teeth, the blur of airtime. My soul tethered to my body but thousands of miles behind. Your head on my shoulder. The plane circles Schiphol, a porthole vision: wind farms, rectangular fields like paper passed through a shredder, shipping containers.