Les jours tristes

I used to hate Paris, but it might have had more to do with him than with anything else. I somehow learned to appreciate it, to look past the flaws and the inconsistencies. I learned to feel at home in Saint Germain, to walk down Boulevard Raspail not feeling like a stranger or a misfit. I've always been weak that way, restless and dissatisfied, looking more in to to the future than in to the past.

It's not that I'm over it now, I just found a way of dealing with everything that used to hurt me. When I drink too much Champagne I still think it's a bad thing, that I've turned in to my mother, a careless person unable to feel anything other than emptiness and apathy.

The shootings last week reminded me that it isn't true, that I can still feel sadness and pain and despair, and as cynical as it sounds, it makes me happy. I remember what it was like once, when I was younger and not as badly damaged, and I know that the pieces of those days are still infused in my bloodstream, hidden somewhere deep beneath the skin and inside the heart.

I hurt just like anyone else, a week later, a week of roller-coaster emotions and scattered thoughts. I'm still here, I'm alive, I'm trying to go on living. I love you.

All I want is you

For Halloween we're invited to a party in Montmartre, friends from his Sorbonne class that I've never even heard of. He needs me to dress up as the most intimidating thing imaginable: "An H&M girl".

We're on our way out when l tell him I can't be around people. It comes over me like vertigo, he doesn't ask why and I think I love him for it. I turn off the lights in his bedroom and pretend he's never coming back. If he died I'd have nothing.

I fall asleep some time after midnight and dream about motorways before he wakes me with his Champagne breath on my cold cheek. His clothes smell of women's perfume, soft, deep ruby lipstick marks on the collar of his Givenchy shirt (the one with the two black stars). He lies down beside me and puts his hand between my legs where I'm still warm.

If I died he'd have nothing.