Nice - Day 4

In the mornings I see him as if through a smudged window, his hair a sun-bleached bird's nest and his nomad hands buried somewhere deep under the pillow (they change positions a thousand times in one night). We take the train away from the melting asphalt and the restlessness, all along the coastline are shimmering beaches and the mountains, flickering by like images from a dream.

We see people living their lives in bathing suits, in the sand, tanned young couples and families with little children running aimlessly close to the water's edge.

He looks at them in silence, leaning still against the warm glass. When his voice breaks the silence it's without warning and it wakes me from something that feels like sleep. "I don't want what they have" he says, "I just wish that if I did it would make me happy". He turns to look at me, the temperature drops a hundred degrees and I've never wanted him closer.