Iris

Mother took me to Paris once when I was 12, she said we could use a change of scenery. I remember her browsing through the airy light-colored spring dresses at Le Bon Marché and Lafayette, carelessly careful as if they were pages in a glossy magazine. I remember her smiling elusively, stroking them sensually with her fingertips as if my father hadn't killed himself a few months earlier.

There's too much space here. I hate the Champs-Élysées and the way we turn to grains of sand, Henry and I. I hate the Place de la Concorde and how it leaves us adrift in the winds and the hours, how I struggle to focus on anything on this side of the horizon.

"Why are you always so cold", he asks me. I'm not sure what he means but I know it has nothing to do with the weather. He takes my hand and puts it to his chest, I feel his heart beating through the soft layers of fabric before the moment passes and drifts away.