Empty House
The Parisienne within
sits gracefully bent at a small cafe not
three blocks from the Louvre.
The square is an old negative, each color
quenched in its reverse, as she sighs,
regards the croissant moon, a dangling puff pastry
pinned to a papier-mache sky some
rabid surrealist has daubed flat black, faintly
tinted by the violet blood of stars. She waits here
for her assignation: l'etranger dangereux
encountered by chance on le Metro. She savors again
the fragrance of strong dark tobacco
caught in his hair as they swayed far too close.
She waits many hours since her house is empty and
waiting seems better than that.
'And what is an empty house,' she muses
over her fifth vin de pays, 'but a cupped palm
dripping the bright constant stigmata of
your own imperfections?' No amount of pancakes can
fill its hollow stomach. No birds will nest in
its unkindled chimney. There is only dust white
as milk, silence and dead flowers,
a dog that barks a heartbeat somewhere in the distance,
abandoned without music like the deserted cafe
the Parisienne has just left.
As the rackety clap of her stilettos
fades around the corner,
a tall shadow drifts over her table,
but there's only a thin thread of ghost-smoke
twining up from a stubbed-out Gauloise.
March 2024
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