"These Streets"

Sal is walking through the streets of Paris. He and his fiance broke up two months ago. The trip to Paris was supposed to clear his mind, but there are too many memories that are brought up.

Sal: I thought I could come here and forget us. You shoved your ring back in my face and told me that it really wasn’t going to work. Then you left and I haven’t heard from you since. What is it that happened that makes us impossible, because I didn’t get it. I still don’t get it. Walking down the Rue Saint-Jacques is hard. Honestly, “these streets are yours.” These memories are lingering in the back of my mind and I wish to give them to you with a pretty bow so “you can keep them” because “I don’t want them” anymore.

Do you even think of me still? You ran out so fast and didn’t give me a reason for our end, it really felt unsettling. The crêperie on the side street is still here. The same old couple, who we used our broken French with, are there. They’re smiling, they’re holding each other, and passing out macarons. The macarons are all purple today just like the last day we were here celebrating our upcoming wedding. I still don’t know how they tell their flavors apart, but when you’ve been doing something as long as they have I’m sure there is a system. Like I said. These memories are flooding my mind and “they pull me back.” The only thing I can do on this trip is grab a cappuccino and “surrender to the memories I run from.”

Not all our memories are fond. “We have paved these streets” with love and lust and passionate arguments. I remember when we went to Notre-Dame and you didn’t want to go in because there was a service going on. We went in at my request and got ushered out almost immediately for being to happy and laughing. We should not have gone in that day. The “moments of defeat” that overcame me because you were right. You seemed to always be right.

It’s so hard to think about what you’re doing next. Did you find someone else? Are you being your independent self? You have to admit it would be easier if you had told me why we were no longer going to be together, but that wasn’t in the cards. “Even if we won’t admit it to ourselves” I guess it was bound to always end before it began. I wanted to be like our old Parisian couple so that we could “walk upon these streets and think of little else” while holding hands and maybe speaking slightly better French than we know now.

There’s a long pause and Sal thinks back on the memories, getting teary.

This is the last time I’ll ever be able to come to Paris. C’est la vie. “I won’t show my face here anymore.” Paris is yours. I can’t face being here anymore.

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