Leave Love Behind, Not Pieces Of Your Heart

By

I left love here. I left love in Paris.

I didn’t leave my heart.

I left love here, because to leave my heart would be selfish. To leave my heart would be like tucking the desert to sleep without the caress of a sheet or a childhood memory.

I left love here, because I knew it would return and it would find me in the middle of the night, on the steps of the Opéra Bastille, it would whirl from the sewers and find its way around my wrists, which are thinner now, without your grasp.

I left love here, because I wanted my veins to wallop when my memory wept and I wanted my soul to jitter and jostle with the stars when I think of you.

I left love here because otherwise I would not wake, fragments of ventricles and rhythmic contractions would bury my sight and force me to sleep.

I left love here because like sand in the sky, I knew our time was running out and time and love are never lost, merely frozen.

I left love here because when I go back with him, when I go back to Palais—Royal, to our little café, cemented with the shadows of our footprints, I want to know that our love was different, and that our love was Paris, and that this love is a postcard, not an entire city, this love is a distraction, this love fills the left side of the bed, but not the right bank.

I left love here because had I left my heart behind, it would never beat again.