Friday 6 June 2014

Paris, When It Sizzles

The way butter slithers down a hot butter-knife, and comes to rest on the fingers that hold the knife--becoming a golden puddle of melting translucency--her accent curved and bounced, and reached under my skin where it rested and resided for the rest of the night.
There was no meaning that I could attach to her words, and there was no sense that I could derive from them as I sat and heard her speak. Like smooth rivulets, her words cut corners and spilled around on the sides, with insidious gasps and unexpected meetings of her tongue and her ruby-red lips. The sounds that escaped that deep mouth seemed to me like something one would associate with rustling blades of yellow grass dancing on a hot summer afternoon in a virgin field, lazy waves kissing a rocky shore on evenings when the tide is high, the sharp seductive sound of heels clicking and slapping a wooden floor, a warm fire crackling on a stormy black night when you're curled up in bed with nothing to do.
I sat and stared at her, wondering if it would be completely inappropriate if I made a recording of her speaking her lovely language. I could even imagine myself sitting in my living room, with a cup of coffee and the newspaper, with the recording playing in the background like it was the most normal thing to be listening to.
The wind shook me out of my reverie, and I realized that I could no longer hear her luscious accent.
I might have spooked her away with my dropped jaw and all that staring, for I realized that she was suddenly nowhere to be seen.
Dejected and disappointed to know that I would never again hear that lady with the voice that sounded like molten poetry, I lifted my overweight, drunken self off the chair and trudged along into the Parisian evening.
Up ahead, I could see the Eiffel Tower showing the world its evening shimmer, and enchanted tourists (seemingly high on their dose of Paris) going berserk with the umpteen photographic opportunities. It was my last night in France, and as I dragged my feet towards Trocadero, I thought I heard that familiar trill and flow that I had only ever heard in a single woman's voice. A brief rise and a briefer fall of hurried syllables that seemed to have joined into a cohesion of magical sounds reached my ears as they tried to trace the source.
I looked here and there, my neck working hard and my eyes hunting harder, but it was an attempt of futility.
She was gone, I was intuitively quite certain of it, but I would like to believe that she was calling out to me and asking me not to leave. I think Paris will miss me, but more than that, I am convinced, I will miss Paris.

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