A Parisian tomb

There is a tomb for a girl whose name I do not know, and whose face I have never seen, except for in dreams, and once in Paris, I saw her tomb and it was raining and it was cold, but her grave seemed bright, because someone had erected a statue of a girl, a golden girl, and the rain formed rivulets as it rode down her luster and collected in the flooded soil below.

Beneath this chapped memory which is dry beyond belief, there is a place where I will go to hide the fact that I no longer remember, that so much of what I have done seems as if it was seen from a stranger’s eyes, and that wherever I should go, it will be another’s footsteps imprinted  behind, like mirrors which show the effects of age, which we cannot see within the mind’s eye.

It is on nights such as this, my eyes blurred and wearied by the careless window of a search engine, that I feel the tips of my fingers – still soft, still whole – and wonder why I have spent less time bleeding, less time rubbing my palms raw, less time pounding away at keyboards in time with the rhythm of my off-beat heart, as I do now.

There is nothing I can imagine more from a misspent life, than this, and there are other thoughts left to say, tonight even, but I am unable to express them in words so I will retire my fading lips and tired tongue and close my eyes and think of sleep.