A Paris Romance

Paris has often broken my heart. Our tryst began when I was 19, studying at the Sorbonne, as I stumbled through language, culture, youthful romance and John Kennedy’s assassination, learning otherness in a core-defining way. Over the next decades, I ended two marriages in Paris — feeble, last-ditch efforts — “if not in Paris, where?” But last year I returned again, and my love and I renewed vows taken twenty-four years earlier by placing a padlock on an iron ring of the quai and tossing the keys into the Seine. We returned once more this spring and found our lock, glinting gold with other locks from other lovers.

twilight in Paris
blossoms amid cobblestones
je t’aimerais toujours.

25 thoughts on “A Paris Romance”

  1. A love renewed is a beautiful experience, specially in Paris ~ I hope for your journey filled with peace, acceptance, love and finding beauty as you both grow older ~

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  4. Beautiful, Sarah! I love the meaning packed into the final line – Paris or your love?…both, I’m thinking. Your take on the theme is wonderful 🙂

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    1. Oh Frank, I hope not. The bridges are so beautiful! They did have to reconstruct the Pont des Arts because of the weight of all the locks. But because Paris is, after all, the City of Love as well as the City of Light, they saved the railings and installed them near the Place de Concord. We picked a spot that won’t collapse a bridge, so no worries for our lock.

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