⁠It’s not how she expected

I think she lost it after seeing junkies on the streets of Paris, her Paris.
The hollow eyes of strangers sucking her in. She wrote angry letters home
ranting about how she bought the lie when purchasing her plane ticket.

It was not like the movies, there were no whimsical accordions
accompanying her down the street, and she would not find Hemingway
and Fitzgerald in the charming bistros while she sipped on merlot.

Where were the women in polka-dotted scarves tied at the neck?
She’d seen them in silvery films, and pastel pictorials.
Oh, how they’d slink down the Champs-Élysées in trench coats.

She wanted to sip those women with coffee and hot milk,
swallow them in a buttery pastry and hope the communion
would transform her, that she would be elegant and eye-catching,
like the sapphire brooch pinned on a cream cashmere sweater.