For Madeline, on your half birthday

i have seen a lot and met so many but i don’t have any childhood friends nor have i ever lived in a house for more than 4 years. i always wanted to be somewhere else but when i met you in Paris and we’d walk the cobblestone streets of our little neighbourhood it felt like i’d known them my whole life and for the first time in a long time i never wanted to be any where else than right there and with you.

especially when you’d come over through the back gate, unannounced, and lay out your paints in the garden and tell me about the solstice or you’d make crêpes salées in the afternoons or when we roamed the streets at 11pm that one night, the late setting sun leaving us restless and you climbed those wrought iron gates to steal a bunch of lilacs in the spring.

you’d braid daisy chains i’d stop to collect those spring afternoons we’d cycle to Versailles, and in the fall you folded roses from the maple leaves, and clip them to my curtain to find only once you’d left.

we are now on opposite timezones yet when you call me it feels like you’re still around the corner, but then i miss you when i realise you aren’t because you’re walking through the snow and i sit here in the sun.

i am forever glad i know you and that we have that time to fall back on and i know we surely have more adventures ahead. i could only hope for that seeing as i could never tire of you or the poems you send without context.

you are so interesting, funny and true and i wouldn’t be who i am now had we never met.

both our decisions to move alone to france at the same time, to escape different things, let alone end up a few houses from one another, changed my life.

it’s your half birthday which i never knew was a thing until you said. so i am thinking of you extra today.

well, you know i love you, and i will see you in the big apple soon enough,

maybe i’ll surprise you comme un cheveu sur la soupe.

bisous miel abeille x