de la Cité

The Notre Dame burns. A world stands by in disbelief, unable to intervene, powerless to save nearly a thousand years of history. Fire rages, beautiful in its vivid orange against a quiet French spring sky, cracking and singing against the breathless moans of its parishioners, a horrific monster. I sit in the window of my writing bar and watch spring titter maniacally, tossing itself between summer sun and winter winds, seeing it play with the people like ants, willful like a pixie but only ever out for a laugh. My body screams its tiredness at me but my head is full of poetry, my heart it full of cherry blossoms, do you know the ginkgoes are coming now and their budding leaves look like a rash on the trees, itching to get out, impatient to get life started, delirious with possibility. I can’t walk a single block these days without smiling, I regret nothing.

Do you hear me? I regret none of this. Life is willful, unpredictable, glorious, strange. One day we will all be over, one day we will burn to the ground. Don’t you want to make the most of this fire while it lasts?