september 3rd: life inside a music box

I am sitting on the floor of my own Parisian flat. the window in the sloping ceiling above my bed opens wide onto the courtyard where the corners of the art deco buildings converge. the dome of the pantheon is lit up at night, over there, in the corner. when I keep the door open to the hallway & the windows, there is a little Eiffel tower that twinkles at night. my room is on the eighth floor up the winding service staircase that you get to through the courtyard, beyond the glossy foyer. the maids used to live up here to keep the buildings. there are church bells from all across the quartier that chime out of time with each other on their hours, all slightly different. my housing advisor said that I am the luckiest girl in Paris.

music box

the morning light
draws a golden square
on the floor in the middle of my room
where I sit cross-legged,
waiting, brightly.
warm smells from the boulangerie
(eight stories below)
languidly curl around the chimneypots,
stopping to peer in through
the small square window.
(what a lucky maid to have lived up here,
in those golden olden days,
with big windows & a little Eiffel tower,
in such a room that glows
the colour of aging pages,
cheap light bulbs, strong tea, & well-polished wood.)
the wind whispers its crisp autumn secrets;
morning doves wake,
& with them, the traffic of the working class.
life inside a music box means
waiting, latent,
for someone to open it, to wind it up.
I would open the window myself
were I not to disturb the shadows &
the morning light.