She wanders about restless, like a thing trapped by imaginary walls.

She wanders about restless,
like a thing trapped by imaginary walls.

The truth is I don't want to go.

I think of you and know I am also outside of that life, and its securities.

I should want this, the city of light and of possibility.

But I would prefer to stay here in the countryside.

If I could roll back the years would it play out differently?

Would I make the same choices and mistakes?

Would I be at that table looking over here?

Wishing for a live lived free, unconstrained, and on the road to Paris.

There is something so seductive in the fragility of birds.

Is it you Nadja?

A waif, who barely touched the ground as she walked.

A ghost who floated spectral above the pavement.

Spectral with her head held high.

I'm watching a young woman at a table opposite.

The thinness of her wrists and elegance of her hands.

How she holds a cup.

Nails bitten down and painted, like the surface of a weather beaten door.

There are families waiting to depart here in the café.

Tall, thin, a shock of red hair underneath a woollen hat.

Feathers, pink with glitter dangling from her ears.

Her face is broad rather than beautiful, with large eyes and expressions she cannot seem to reign in.

Chipped, cracked and devil may care.

She is occupied with her phone, looking around occasionally as if searching for someone in the crowd.

But not really waiting for anyone.

To my left a woman more like Nadja has arrived.

Tall, thin, a shock of tangled red hair underneath a woollen hat. Feathers, pink with glitter dangling from her ears.

So I put it from my mind in the hope of not jinxing blind fate and chance.

I will be in the city by early afternoon today, its streets, its time, its history is too much to think about.