In Paris, we walked–through Montmartre, perhaps–
where people carried baguettes under their arms,
like my mother’s purse. Look, my parents said,
there, the Seine, the Mona Lisa, the Eiffel Tower—

and they glanced through guidebooks and at maps
for lost love, and Paris’s hidden charms
rekindled their passion for only a moment instead.
As the bells tolled the new year, the passing hours

my older sister read, and fed us scraps–
the story of the Danish prince; no harm
in telling this story of ghosts, the dead
return, my mom still sits amongst the flowers.

For dVerse, an attempt at Rimas Dissolutas.