Merci, Mercy

On loose ends and such

Before I lie to you, about my last 3-4 weeks writing in Paris and South France, for online clout, flex points that don’t transfer, and bragging rights that dissipate quicker than a 45/47 constituency promise, I want to tell you about the leaf that changed my life. The life I’m referring to is the novel I traveled across the pond to finish, because if that manuscript is one day purchased, it will have indeed changed a portion of where I am figuratively.

This leaf I found on my routine walk through Jardin du Luxembourg, after hours spent in a coffee shop east of me, or a brasserie north of me, or, when I’m lucky, a boulangerie a mile high of me, asked me to wait, pause, stop.

It’s the leaf that fell from one of the garden’s trees or, if you grew up in the church like me, from the heavens. A prayer I needed, because a character thread in my story has been dragging me for the past 2 months.

This leaf, like the others that draped, lined, and held serve on the park’s footpaths, was half turnt and half dead, though many will argue the fallen are just that, gone. But the visual of the leaf sat with me unlike its kin, the way warm baguettes slouch in paper sleeves in supermarchés at 9AM openings, the way wool coats lean back in the breeze in local street markets, the way my favorite server greets me every morning with Bonjour Monsieur, stepping away from his tasks to shake my hand, then offering Allez-vous prendre votre habituel, le parisien, the way my favorite fleuriste gives me the nod, because Bonjour is chill but the subtle head movement marks us familiar, the way the most prestigious restaurant a few doors down clears room for a brotha who doesn’t dare make a reservation that doesn’t exist, the way ghosts in a century-old country home in the Bordeaux region take PTO, because where’s the joy in frightening the life out of a soul that dun locked himself inside for one week of torture, handwritten on mouldmade.

That leaf, half alive, half anti-resuscitation, told me the character thread I’ve been fighting to keep, might be a blessing to leave.

Before I lie to you, I’m ordering cafés and espresso doubles that don’t do nothing. My usual herbal tea might suffice, but sophistication in French quarters is best dished as 30mL a serving; pinkies up.

Thank goodness for half feuilles from branches that play dead two months to winter, stopping me in my tracks, redirecting my thoughts, and quite possibly saving me paper. I’m getting tired of killing trees.

Yours truly,

RW

P.S. S/o to Tuvok