paris isn’t a city of pick-pocketing thieves! it’s a city of chivalrous twenty-something year olds who help your luggage over the turnstiles & don’t steal it afterwards & inn keepers who turn the basement sauna on for you & & girls who don’t know you taking your photo in front of monuments you don’t know & getting to see the eiffel tower from so close, it’s disorienting & you feel like your looking up it’s skirt & half-rebuilt cathedrals & restauranteurs who chat off past their busking hour to fall in love with you & a very dirty river & & friends who want to run along side it with you & very average tasting coffee with cow’s milk & very average-tasting croissants & baguettes & strangers really reading books & dutch royal heirs taking dark-haired girls to coffee at victor hugo’s estate to explain their fortunes & the financial health of hong kong & how their hedge funds depend on it & five more construction projects & philanthropy & the state of the world’s economy & their family name, & people who hear my accent in the town square where mozart once played & find it endearing instead of annoying & the french man dressed as a mime playing la vie en rose on the train at 8 am while everyone on board wanted desperately to be anywhere else & the grey & the fluorescence & the magic french words that transport me to childhood, spoken & swallowed in croaks & coughs & clichés & cigarettes smoked between the chicest fingers & spoken delegated words & the most elegant little boutiques with non-pretentious owners & the little gray old man who owns a vintage store with used books who poured his second hand smoke into the night, leaving me no choice but to go to his dinner recommendation & the girls sharing drinks between the yellow lamplight of a smoky bar & trains coming & always going & the little kids & their dads in striped, slightly V-necked shirts & the voweled interjections parisiens add into the middle of their phrases that make them more lovely, more present, & more alive.
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