“To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.” Oscar Wilde
09 / 09 / 2026
Living in Paris feels like kneeling at the altar of appetite. I’m gutted to be leaving her. With her bored elegance, gold-leaf streets and blood-red, ruby lights. She doesn’t try to seduce you; she assumes you’ll fall eventually. A romance a heart gladly bleeds for.
Recently, the blade said to have parted Marie Antoinette from her breath was purchased at auction. The revolution still seeps up from the cracks in the pavement, from the dust of the street stalls, and ramblings of the boisterous drunks arguing philosophy on every corner. The bones of six million beneath the city rattle at the thought.
Here, the air is thick with lust and smoke, just as the chocolate is thick with Chantilly cream. We all swim through, slowly, savoring, and with a sigh. The unbothered spirit leads a life pure of guilt. The pure march on, vices in hand, with hearts the weight of a feather.
Beneath all of this velvet and sugar, something stirs. What is the cost of beauty? Did Monet tire of the lilies? Degas of the bodies that refused to stay still? Did they feel encased in their own creation?
I’m falling into the quicksand of my troubled mind. I look around at the faces nearby. I look down at my hands.
“Mousse au chocolat, offerte par la maison.” A voice resonated nearby.
“Mon préféré!”
Darkness falls over Le Marais as my final evening begins. The final act. Sugar on the tongue. The blood moon painted the glistening cobblestones as I slipped into a café. A man peers out from behind his cigarette plume,
“When the music’s over, turn out the lights.”
I thought I was hallucinating, until the bartender popped up from behind the bar and nodded in his direction. Earlier that day, I had stood before Jim Morrison’s grave at Pére-Lachaise, leaving him a bottle of Jack Daniels with one swig missing. Tribute, or dare?
“There are things known and things unknown,” he wrote, “and in between are the doors.”
“Fermée?” I asked in my clumsy accent, doing something unfortunate to the “r”.
He gave me a once-over, “Oui, but you can sit. I close when I close.”
My grandmother always used to say, “You could jump out of a plane and find a parachute on the way down.” Possibly more for caution than encouragement.
I’ve observed in my life a pattern, a secret choreography between danger and deliverance. Pressure builds, swelling until one can no longer contain it. Just when the rupture feels inevitable, when I’m certain I’ll split open upon the pavement, improbability intervenes. A door swings open. A palm appears from the shadows. I don’t rely on it, but I’ve come to expect it. Luck, madness, and grace wear the same perfume. I have kissed each of them in the dark.
The man flicked the ash from his crooked cigarette. My eyes followed it as it hit the floor in slow motion, falling like a star. The café was swollen with stale breath and unspoken confessions. The espresso machine wheezed every few moments, as if it resented being alive. The walls stretched around me, bending and groaning as they inched closer. Smoke caressed my skin and I turned suddenly.
“You left the Jack for me,” the bartender said, though his mouth never moved.
He stood polishing that same cloudy glass, with the devotion of a man who has nothing left in life but circles. Then suddenly, he froze, as though something cold had passed straight through him. His unsettling gaze cut between us like a blade. Like this was all expected.
The air tightened around my throat, the way it does when you’ve said something you can’t take back. My chest heaved in silence as I attempted a laugh. I chalked it up to exhaustion. An overfed imagination. A woman alone with too much night inside of her.
I pushed back my chair and swore that the others in the room inched back with it. The scrape split the silence like torn silk. I made for the door, but the handle was jammed. Behind me, the man’s voice drifted through the smoke,
“Every door has its price.” The words pressed against my spine.
Then, light. I stumbled into a violent sunrise. Not a soul in sight. I turned back, the café stood derelict, abandoned to dust and memory. The sunlight burned without tenderness as I stepped into the peak summer heat. I wondered if the world had been rewritten when I wasn’t looking, and if I was the only one to remember the previous draft.
Most People Only Exist (Paris)
“To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.” Oscar Wilde
09 / 09 / 2026
Living in Paris feels like kneeling at the altar of appetite. I’m gutted to be leaving her. With her bored elegance, gold-leaf streets and blood-red, ruby lights. She doesn’t try to seduce you; she assumes you’ll fall eventually. A romance a heart gladly bleeds for.
Recently, the blade said to have parted Marie Antoinette from her breath was purchased at auction. The revolution still seeps up from the cracks in the pavement, from the dust of the street stalls, and ramblings of the boisterous drunks arguing philosophy on every corner. The bones of six million beneath the city rattle at the thought.
Here, the air is thick with lust and smoke, just as the chocolate is thick with Chantilly cream. We all swim through, slowly, savoring, and with a sigh. The unbothered spirit leads a life pure of guilt. The pure march on, vices in hand, with hearts the weight of a feather.
Beneath all of this velvet and sugar, something stirs. What is the cost of beauty? Did Monet tire of the lilies? Degas of the bodies that refused to stay still? Did they feel encased in their own creation?
I’m falling into the quicksand of my troubled mind. I look around at the faces nearby. I look down at my hands.
“Mousse au chocolat, offerte par la maison.” A voice resonated nearby.
“Mon préféré!”
Darkness falls over Le Marais as my final evening begins. The final act. Sugar on the tongue. The blood moon painted the glistening cobblestones as I slipped into a café. A man peers out from behind his cigarette plume,
“When the music’s over, turn out the lights.”
I thought I was hallucinating, until the bartender popped up from behind the bar and nodded in his direction. Earlier that day, I had stood before Jim Morrison’s grave at Pére-Lachaise, leaving him a bottle of Jack Daniels with one swig missing. Tribute, or dare?
“There are things known and things unknown,” he wrote, “and in between are the doors.”
“Fermée?” I asked in my clumsy accent, doing something unfortunate to the “r”.
He gave me a once-over, “Oui, but you can sit. I close when I close.”
My grandmother always used to say, “You could jump out of a plane and find a parachute on the way down.” Possibly more for caution than encouragement.
I’ve observed in my life a pattern, a secret choreography between danger and deliverance. Pressure builds, swelling until one can no longer contain it. Just when the rupture feels inevitable, when I’m certain I’ll split open upon the pavement, improbability intervenes. A door swings open. A palm appears from the shadows. I don’t rely on it, but I’ve come to expect it. Luck, madness, and grace wear the same perfume. I have kissed each of them in the dark.
The man flicked the ash from his crooked cigarette. My eyes followed it as it hit the floor in slow motion, falling like a star. The café was swollen with stale breath and unspoken confessions. The espresso machine wheezed every few moments, as if it resented being alive. The walls stretched around me, bending and groaning as they inched closer. Smoke caressed my skin and I turned suddenly.
“You left the Jack for me,” the bartender said, though his mouth never moved.
He stood polishing that same cloudy glass, with the devotion of a man who has nothing left in life but circles. Then suddenly, he froze, as though something cold had passed straight through him. His unsettling gaze cut between us like a blade. Like this was all expected.
The air tightened around my throat, the way it does when you’ve said something you can’t take back. My chest heaved in silence as I attempted a laugh. I chalked it up to exhaustion. An overfed imagination. A woman alone with too much night inside of her.
I pushed back my chair and swore that the others in the room inched back with it. The scrape split the silence like torn silk. I made for the door, but the handle was jammed. Behind me, the man’s voice drifted through the smoke,
“Every door has its price.” The words pressed against my spine.
Then, light. I stumbled into a violent sunrise. Not a soul in sight. I turned back, the café stood derelict, abandoned to dust and memory. The sunlight burned without tenderness as I stepped into the peak summer heat. I wondered if the world had been rewritten when I wasn’t looking, and if I was the only one to remember the previous draft.