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,
that 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.
He put me on the train.
After my croissant, I found my hotel.
The concierge, hair held by a scarf,
hands wrinkled and scarred,
in her chair by the entrance.
The toilet and bathroom,
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,
stayed with his mother’s best friend.
His mother had died young.
I felt our host gave him the nod,
like 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 go,
not letting me land.
By the time I got to Paris, we had
one last dinner,
one last night
at a Romantikhotel in Fulda.
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.
I 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.
