Her feet march confidently against the pavement, creating a clank: the clank of a woman. A clank that draws attention subtly, disregarding the fact that it may be disrupting a silence. Her shoes are falling apart; the soles separating from the base-they lost their tightness, their inexperience. Life has marked her shoes.
They’d been with her during her first and last kiss, through five countries, and over six years, which at nineteen, made up almost a third of her life. Her shoes were stamped and she was wildly conscious to the fact that soon, life would stamp her too.
Soon the creases when she smiles won’t disappear. Her eyes will droop, becoming accustomed to gravity’s allure, no longer able to merely ignore it; overlook it. Her hair will surrender its color. Life will mark her, and she won’t be able to buy a new version of herself. She’ll be marked as experienced, whether she has achieved any or not.
The rush of the station fades. An immediacy that normally consumes her, lays at rest, being overpowered by a moment. A moment not nearly as vivid in its present, but now undeniably true.
The green of the trees, at the time a mere shade, now emerald and crisp. She never appreciates anything to its fullest until it’s gone; until she can no longer hold it as an option. Raking leaves, a pretty tedious and mundane chore-one that at the time caused an incessant resentment towards her mom, now seems romantic-a task where she engulfed nature and breathed in air far less polluted than she was now. Air that wasn’t a questionable combination of urine and shit.
The stench fills her nostrils, going deep into her and overpowering her memory. Disoriented, the present reappears, surfacing itself like a TV program. A program that’s prepared to be half-consciously watched while you half-heartedly consider the agendas of your life.
There’s a man sitting next to her. His scarf matches his shoes. His face is marked. His eyes droop, but earnestly. He smiles at the woman across from him, the wrinkles fitting perfectly into place.
The woman lets a small smirk sneak through her ‘too cool for emotions’ persona; a persona that intrigues our woman. The whole ‘I only wear black because who has time to enjoy things like color’ persona. It’s cool. Maybe not fun…but definitely cool.
Presumably a song came on she likes, or maybe she remembered something nice. Our woman finds comfort in her smile; a reminder that we’re not living in some formulated world; a world so easily calculated as when the next train will arrive or how many stops you have left on the metro. Not everything is so systematic and reliable. Life isn’t really linear; emotion isn’t linear.
This woman lets the smirk stain her for a few moments. A smirk that seems to pacify her, put her to ease. It’s taking her out of her reality for that moment, or maybe putting her back into it. Her smile fades, her skin reverting back to its smooth façade.-is it clear that this woman isn’t the main character?
Her moment’s quickly ruined by a man, his face white-paper white-his body slender. His nails are overgrown and his hair runs into his face. He’s tall and thin. Too thin and his face is attentive, his eyes dashing from passenger to passenger. Our woman’s lips tighten, her head tilting downwards.
He begins chirping like a bird. Not one of those fancy birds either; the ones people look up to wide-eyed as the bird soars masculinely and authoritatively; as though it knows better. No, this man sounds like one who’s small…and helpless…and gray. Maybe even dying.
He’s mentally ill. He has some sort of something terrible. Too terrible for him to be conscious of why he’s drawing attention to himself. He chirps like a bird for a few more moments. It’s more of a squawk really. Like he’s being chased down and knows that he’s done for. A squawk of merely trying to give one thing back to the world; influence the world in some way within its last moments of life.
The cart goes completely silent. Suddenly everyone is reading or browsing their phones, assuming the somehow known protocol for situations such as these. The man nervously twitches his neck from side to side. On one side he is a bird. The other side he just repeats ‘Satan’ in his bird-squawk tone. Our woman looks down into her book, blending.
She gets off the metro. Walking across the platform, the breeze sweeps under her skirt, cooling her legs. Effortlessly flowing up to a moderately modest degree, she beholds an essence of confidence. A confidence that doesn’t ask for attention or re-affirmation, but rather stews into itself, growing and growing, producing more and more independence.
She feels the beauty and effortlessness of her skirt, standing up a little straighter. She feels the confidence of Madame Bovary after any guy showed her the remotest attention. That, at one point, had been our woman’s favorite book. When she was younger something made sense to her about Madame Bovary. She was bored. She wanted something more. She wanted love and romance. She just wanted to be loved; she turned everything (but her husband) into love. Living in a world of over-romanticizations…maybe that was the secret to it all.
Our woman, catching a glimpse of her reflection, stops.
She reminds herself of Patricia from Breathless. Walking down the Champs Elysees, pretending like she's Parisian; forgetting she's as American as they come. Her nails, long and red, her shirt-striped and tight. She's put together.
If only 16-year-old-her could see her now. She’d be so proud. Her entire life she'd wanted nothing more than to be Patricia. Patricia was her introduction to what being a woman could be. To be the woman who strolls nonchalantly and inhabits such a romanticized city as Paris; the woman who is the over-romanticization; the woman who effortlessly forces the most badass man in a city to be romanticized with her.
The ‘goal’ isn’t as satisfying when you’re actually in it. The past is always remembered with logic, rubbing in the fact that it’s gone and the future is exciting, tapping its foot and forcing the present moment to slip by through a lens of anticipation.
prob take this out: But the present is merely reality-a medium that’s designed to be easily digested; a moment to be distracted by advertisements or immediate goals, purchases, etc. But the past and future hold many options, possibilities and require more than just consciousness. They’re harder to digest. She stares at her reflection. She is this woman. She is the woman she has wanted to be her entire life. But she's not at home.
Our woman, tired from walking, surrenders to the metro. A small florist stands in the station, alone, without a stand. She merely holds a few bouquets, yelling excessively and entirely intrusively that her flowers are only five euros: a steal for sure.
Our woman smirks slyly. She used to be this woman, working as a florist, selling flowers, trying to convince people to buy these flowers; any flowers.
Our woman looks to the bouquets-anemones: her favorite. She finds anemones classic, classic in a way that doesn’t ask to be classic. Classic in a way that’s still modern; a class that modernity looks up to. Our woman feels another smile come on before she even acknowledges that she’s smiling—a natural response. A response triggered by something way more complex than she is; than she’ll ever be.
She kneels down, her knees brushing on the cement. The anemone looks up at her, not asking for anything. It knows it’s worth being bought. It doesn’t need to advertise itself. It commands appreciation; commands it without her even noticing: confidence to its core.
Our main character reaches towards the bouquet, taking the petal gently, tenderly, its silky surface brushing off on her fingers-wrinkled and stiff from the cold. The smoothness continues, the flower leaning against her hand. She supports its head, the anemone’s black core holding itself together. It doesn’t need her or her support. Even as she looks down at this flower, fully capable of destroying it, it still has the control. This flower has done it-become a complete entity; a finished product.
The middle of the head is made up of a bunch of small prickles. They’re purple—a deep eggplant-y purple. She’d never seen a purple anemone before, only black ones. There are multiple prickles, each growing separately, but becoming apart of the single flower. She hands the woman a five and walks away.
transition needed?
Walking it quickly becomes night. It’s spring and the night carries with it a sense of rest. A coolness that strays from uncomfortable, instead wrapping itself and refreshing you from the day. The sun is off to somewhere else, and it’s just you and the night.
Frustration uncontrollably zigzags through her. The night holds with it some sense of secret; a sense of belonging; a collective freedom. A sense that it knows you’re trying to rest. It knows you. It knows your day. It lets you melt into it, melt into yourself, the pressure and heat of the sun finally gone.
The smell of spring wafts around; the intensity and pageant-y grandeur of the sun no longer overbears the sensible qualities of her surroundings. Finally she smells nature without this distraction of the sun; of sight. She smells nature fully. A smell that picks up all the restaurants, people, and action. Letting you take them all in, in the comfort of wherever you are. The air of night carries with it the excitement of life, cooling it down and blowing it towards you.
Walking, she’s reminded of going home as a kid late at night. When hanging out with friends was still referred to as ‘play dates’ and her friends were pre-determined by whose parents her mom preferred, or rather whose numbers her mom still had lying around. Nights when she was scared. Nights when the darkness crept up and engulfed her-every story of kidnapping or murder suddenly wafting across her like some eluded ghost. The nights where even though she was scared, she knew where she was going. She knew her path. Although unfamiliar at night, it was more than familiar during the day and it was this familiarity she had focused on, placing one converse in front of the other.
She walks-head up and heels clanking. She has made it home far later than this. When the sun was peeking its head back through the night. She reached into her pocket, changing the song that was playing and breathed in deeply. Deep enough to smell the night again; smell the rest it assured, a rest it had always ensured.-is it clear this is in present?
Suddenly she stops, biting her nails and looking around. The lamp posts shed their beaming lights seemingly only onto her, the rest of the street dark and endless. She looks down, placing one foot in front of the other. A perfect line. One foot in front of the other. She breathes in, the night invading her.
She is the past. She is an accumulation of the past. It disorients her present; taking her out of any ‘real’ perception. She jumped back onto the metro. Maybe it’s okay to be disoriented. The disorientation is apart of her reality.-prob take this out
She reaches her house, immediately looking out her window. The lights and flickers of televisions illuminate the creamy facades. One by one the lights go out. The nightly smell of Resident 101’s potatoes and onions is over-whelmed by the night. Suddenly Paris is asleep. The darkness surrounds her, coddles her as her eyes become heavier.
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