I only wanted it to perpetually smell like cigarette smoke and hear the click of brown leather boots. And to see the way the sun shone on those iron railings. on dark hair, on empty checkered patio tables with the silver ashtrays, on smooth white walls stretching for miles. I wanted to press my face against the warmth of your chest, through the thin black silk, and feel that muscle wired just below, something to rely on.

I saw myself stumbling home over gleaming stones, red hot from three glasses of red wine, then rising early, alone, to open the shutters in a white kimono, savoring glimpses of what I’d tasted in the safety of the night.

I wanted to live, like the wind, driven only by hunger for something to brush against and to disappear again. And perhaps you would see me on Rue Cambon one day, my hair straight and long, like a beacon in the cold wind. Yet I never saw you in these dreams, i thought you needed more than me.

I said “you need someone who loves you like you love you”. So i thought that could never be me, at least not now when i had visions of something else, which made us hungry. It was the same hunger when i watched the man working at Lecleureur lift his shirt over his head through the jewelry case reflection, so careless and beautiful with blonde hair, a halo. He didn’t notice when we left. For him, it was just another day.

I watched the white waves from ten-thousand feet above, still as the rocks they crashed against. I read white oleander and I thought of my desire. I thought about your hands roaming over me as we lay under pink light. I wondered if anyone would be enough for me.