at night the words come
effortlessly
long forgotten but now
exploding forth
je suis
je vais
je peux
but in the red brick streets by day
I am stumbling
over words and uneven pathways and dead-end mazes
I am stumbling
the basilica rises across a plaza—
from this angle, little more than weathered bricks
hollowed at the corners
I circle the garden gate
looking for a photo
as if to prove
je suis
je peux
je vais
but the pictures are just
an unframed steeple
a horizon
a close-up of bricks
I am stumbling
the door to the transept is open, inviting
1100 years of prayer
these walls and these windows,
witnesses of whispered pleas
sent out to whatever is beyond
these cement columns, built over a millennia
curve into magnificence
I tilt my head and wonder
how something so heavy can rise so effortlessly
above
I want to touch these walls
I want to feel their rough texture
I want to run my fingers over their pockets and edges
but
they are roped off to me
instead, I kneel
genuflection an instinct
as is the prayer that bubbles forth
hands at heart, more than the words I can muster
je peux
je suis
je vais
three other pews, in states of quietude
I imagine that
together
we are praying
and remembering—
we are more than of this earth
we are made of stars
in these thousand-year-old bricks
we sit with eternity
and the universes unfolding within it
later, in the boulangerie, I ask for a chocolatine
effortless
s’il vous plait
merci
au revoir
effortless
but when I try to say more
the words are calcified in the sludge of who I was
who I am not now
who I have forgotten
I am stumbling
until I slip into sleep
and the words come back
effortless
and I remember that I, too, am eternity
Melissa Gibson is a faculty member in the College of Education as an Associate Professor of Educational Policy & Leadership.
Gibson says about the piece: “I went back to France for the first time in 20+ years, after living there as a young adult, and some long dormant part of me — the language, yes, but also my younger self — was jostled back into existence. How holy it is to get to be these selves that evolve and persist over time.”
“The Millinery Shop”, Edgar Degas (1897).