Surviving Paris
Katie Popiel
The Eiffel Tower shimmers behind a wall of Hollywood pyrotechnics.
Surely this was not what Monsieur Eiffel had in mind when he
designed his awkward giraffe.
At 2 a.m., only Parisian hookers
and clueless foreign exchange students like me
are still wandering the rain-stained sidewalks.
The black sky hovers close above my head,
offering no solace.
An impenetrable eternity stands
between my uncomfortable but adequate bed at the Hotel Campanile
and me.
Excusez- moi, le Campanile?
Another chemically imbalanced cab driver shakes his head.
"too far," he barks in questionable English,
assuming that a poor American nitwit could not possibly
understand his superior language and delicate accent.
The rain swirls down, beating my dripping head like machine gun fire.
I lean in the window of the next cab, hand the bored driver
my map and then the address, printed in large letters.
He tilts his magnifying glass above them and scowls.
I don't bother to explain in my self-conscious French. I just take back
my pieces of paper and walk on.
Paris is a distant memory.
Stuck in the closed metro station at 3:45 a.m.
The pools of vomit sliding around the train floor.
The sweaty, smelly Europeans pressing up against the glass partition
that protects the Mona Lisa from grubby hands.
And the serene beauty of the Champs Elysees,
Stretching majestically out between the Louvre and the Arc de Triomphe.
I'm a different girl now.
Not yet Maya Angelou's phenomenal woman, but a work in progress,
like everyone else.
Too much to juggle, too many people to please, too much bottled up.
So what if I'm not much of a philosopher. My philosophy is the same
as Gilda Radner's: It's always something.
Something gone wrong just when you thought the world had been glued
back together
And Grandma says it's darkest before dawn.
So wake me,
Lift me,
Shatter me in the cocoon of a new day.
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