1.

I called you from Paris to tell you I wrote our names on the observation deck of the Eiffel Tower. I was in a glass phone booth, watching the twinkle lights travel up the Tower's wrought iron weave and wave their glowing arms at stars burning billions of miles away. Across an ocean, you laughed around a mouthful of blueberry jam on rye and told me how expensive long distance fees were. I hung up with fifty-seven minutes left on a phone card that depicted cherry blossoms exploding before the Jefferson Memorial. As I left into the sharp October air, the telephone receiver fell off its red cradle, clattering down the length of its metal coil and coming to a dangle, the beeping tone as faint on the noisy capital streets as light bulbs in a sky of western stars.

I turned up my coat collar against the nighttime chill.

2.

The man making crêpes by the Luxembourg Gardens had slicked back hair and jeans with ripped and dirtied cuffs. Strong forearms protruded from checkered shirtsleeves rolled back to the elbow; muscles twisted like cord as he lazily spun my crêpe into the air. He lined the paper-thin folds with copious amounts of blueberry preserves. I sunk my teeth into the delicate piece with a hunger of the ages.

3.

The Louvre underwhelms and overwhelms me. I idly wish I were an art history major, and miss you.

4.

I climbed Notre Dame with white sneakers and the Sacre Coeur steps with gray ones.

5.

Dear Cecily: Your absence has gone through me like a needle through thread — everything I do is stitched with its color. Love. James.

I write W.S. Merwin's words on the back of a postcard with a montage of French images: the glass Louvre pyramid, the tricolor flag flapping above L'Arc de Triomph, a red wine bottle casting its long shadow over a platter of cheese. My blue ink runs and smears where my hot chocolate mug has left a ring of liquid, like a kiss.

6.

I trained to Versailles on a perfect Sunday and watched myself watching my reflection in the sun-hit windows. There were shadows like thunderclouds beneath my blue eyes. I rested cold, used tea bags under them that night, like you during exam week so long ago. I wasn't trying to channel you through the peppermint tea and chilled pouch of herbs — just that the peppermint smells kept me wakeful, and my thoughts strayed.

7.

"Richard —"

"Oh, it's Richard now, we're back in Paris."

I wanted to be Humphrey Bogart, if only for ten minutes, if only to extract that diamond tear from Ingrid Bergman's Scandinavian eyes against "the world will always welcome lovers as time goes by."

8.

Tomorrow, I will take the metro for what must be the fiftieth time and stare at the color-coded map inside my subway car. I will examine the dark green line, like the threads spiraling out your favorite holiday sweater; the fire-engine red of my bathrobe you wrapped yourself in when stepping out of the shower, steam crowding around your silhouette; the orange in your sunset-over-water photo series. I will watch the metro map as my stops flash by and recall your pallet of blended acrylic paints: the yellows, the violets, the indigos.

9.

La parole humaine est comme un chaudron fêle òu nous battons des melodies à faire danser les ours, quand on voudrait attendrir les étoiles. ^*

It's always been easier to speak through someone else's words; Flaubert is as good as anyone. (But for Cecily I would have restructured the constellations.)

10.

I tasted you in my champagne flute yesterday: your kisses bubbly and golden; a contained, explosive rush. I once swore your hormones were carbonated; you pushed me against the headboard and laughed into my open mouth. Then I had slipped my hand an inch below the waistband of your underwear (my basketball print boxers that afternoon), and suddenly in my ear you sounded like you'd run a marathon.

11.

I dart into many of the chapels I pass, drop a Euro piece into the collection tin, and light a candle to your frequent flier miles and Italian dissertation and stupid pantry shelves stocked with jellies.

12.

I called you from Paris to read you bad sonnets over the wire. I formed incomplete pentameters with the phrase "mon sacre coeur" and emphasized the iambs, sloppy and mad. I told you about watching Casablanca, peppered the retelling with measures from "As Time Goes By." My voice cracked against the low notes and I barely heard you say, "I'm coming."

13.

Tomorrow I will buy a one-way to Athens' Parthenon and islands of white roofs, to another place that wears its heart on its sleeve. The day after tomorrow, you will disembark with the scraggly blonde mermaid hair that so knotted my fingers, or a tamed, layered shoulder-length. Your hands will be charcoal-blackened or freshly manicured, but I will be winding through Grecian streets.

(I will be missing you by eight, and raising a Sharpie to Mt. Olympus.)

14.

A plane ticket, my kingdom for a plane ticket. The City of Lights to do this right.