I placed my order in a Paris café,
bracing for the waiter to be rude to me.
He was kind and patient, and my fear melted
like the buttered croissant on my tongue.
I arrived alone in Paris by overnight train.
I got a Eurorail ticket to leave the man who became my husband now.
It was only a few months after our first date,
me moving in with him,
all in a single night.
He flew with me from Hong Kong to Germany.
He introduced me to his family,
to his hometown.
He bought me
blood red Doc Martens walking boots,
a black Nike crossbody backpack,
and put me on the train.
After my croissant, I found my hotel.
The concierge, hair held by a scarf,
hands wrinkled and scarred,
sat in her chair by the entrance.
The toilet and bathroom were a few doors from my room.
I started walking,
getting lost in Paris,
not finding anything I did not love.
I was leaving him because he couldn’t decide.
If he wanted me.
If I was good enough.
If I was calm enough.
Obedient enough.
By the time I got to Paris,
he had followed me home to Canberra and Sydney.
In Canberra I hid him in a hotel room,
less than a year after my first wedding.
By the time I got to Paris,
we had walked the streets of Ubud,
sharing satay and krupuk beside the rice fields.
I had given him my body fully.
By the time I got to Paris,
we had roamed the streets of Taipei,
visited the National Museum,
and stayed with his mother’s best friend.
His mother had died young.
I felt she gave him the nod,
the same way his friends at dinner did earlier that year.
By the time I got to Paris,
we had thought I might have been pregnant.
He
did not flinch,
did not run,
he was disappointed when it wasn’t so.
By the time I got to Paris,
he was still orbiting his ex-wife,
not letting her go,
not letting me land.
By the time I got to Paris,
we had one last dinner,
one last night
at a Romantikhotel in Germany.
On crisp starched linen
he took me hard.
He applied his belt.
Marking what was already slipping.
I let him.
I carried the welts
when I boarded the train.
I had enough of not knowing:
Do I belong to him?
Does he belong to me?
In Paris
I walked alone.
I ate alone.
Mona Lisa smiled at me alone.
All within six months of our first night together.
By the next time I was in Paris,
I wasn’t alone.
It was with him.
We had a daughter.
We named her Petra.
I’ve kept returning since.
Last Christmas, we took our three daughters
ice-skating in the Grand Palais.
It’s been twenty years since my first trip to Paris.
Twenty years of asking:
Do I belong to him?
Does he belong to me?
Paris and Sevilla belong to the same passage of my life.
In Paris, I left him.
In Andalusia, he came to meet me.
Between Paris and Seville I spent a month alone, crossing a continent.
Alone for the first time since adolescence.
He thought he was coming to get me.
I knew he was arriving to orbit me.
