It’s been almost a year now.
I still feel like I see their ghosts everywhere.
I have to write them down and remember them because if I don’t, who will?
My four months in Paris, that space in time set completely apart from anything happening back home. It’s only after you come back that you feel you’ve missed anything.
The songs on the radio changed.
My family had new slang.
My roommate developed a taste for coffee.
It was like waking up and discovering you’ve been in a four month coma while you had the greatest dream of your life.
I’m sure that’s how Dorothy felt when she woke up.
This world went on without me and until I reentered it, home seemed like the dream.
I remember all of them.
Lucille with her crazed curls, sat at the table in the common kitchen and carved an avocado pit into a face.
Gabriel, the Italian who spoke five languages and dreamt of moving to Germany. I helped him with his English résumé.
And Mariana. The Brazilian.
Whose arms I collapsed into, crying.
Who introduced me to Desperados Red, the “beer” I enjoy.
With whom I was accused of being drunk, even though really we were laughing so hard because of what Abu said. He’d walked up to us and said something about how we were always together. I responded that we were just friends. He’d raised an eyebrow and said “not more than friends?”
Who told me she’d realized she was a lesbian in France.
Who told me I smelled amazing, even though I wasn’t wearing perfume.
Who so many people asked if I was dating, despite my taste for men.
Who Belhassen said seemed as though she was trying to seduce me.
I miss her the most.
There was the time I had an animated discussion in French with a group about whether men should dress up for their weddings. The men were all against it, the women all for it.
When Belhassen, the Tunisian, taught me a swear word in Arabic, which I, not knowing it was rude, then said to his sister.
The Germans:
Moritz, who made sangria for his birthday in a very washed garbage can that we all drank out of through connected extra-long straws.
Stephani, who I walked to the Louvre with in the dark.
Sophie, who taught me to say “It’s fucking cold” in German and who I watched learn to balance plates on her arm for her waitressing job and drink bad red wine because it was cheap.
David, who I had a ridiculous crush on for no real reason. He had a thing for Anna, anyway.
Anna, the silent white-haired elf of a girl I barely spoke to.
Pia, my roommate who bought me Harry Potter in French for my birthday and left a ton of shit after she moved out.
The French boys, like Hérmès, the flirtatious “brasseur” or waiter, who always wore an apron to cook and once made me call him “Lord of the Universe” in order to borrow some salt. He spoke English horribly, but was always kind, if randy.
Fabien, the adorable young Frenchman who, along with Dreis, abused the outside intercom by yelling loudly into it as people walked by the building and watched them jump.
Dani, the Spaniard whose French was delightful and who had come to Paris not speaking it. Who always paid for my drink but never drank alcohol. Who wrote a large, complicated paper on creative clustering which I proofread but didn’t properly understand.
When I think of those times, they seem surreal, fictional. I cling to the photographs I have of them, of the time I spent there, because if I didn’t I feel they would disappear. It’s not that they individually had a huge impact on my life, but collectively they created the picture of the life I lived there, like a brush-stroke in an impressionist painting. If you knew all the brush strokes by name.
It’s like coming back to Kansas, except the faces in your dream aren’t the faces of people around you.
“You were there, and you were there, and you…”
That’s what I say to the shadows of them I find around me. An avocado pit. Someone with smiling cheeks. A French nose. A German accent. A specific grey sweater. The thing about brushstrokes is, they get lost to the bigger picture.
Claire Helakoski is a writer and educator currently living in Hancock, Michigan, where she teaches writing courses and acts as Assistant Writing Center Director for Michigan Technological University. Claire has an MFA in Creative Writing and a BA in Creative Writing and French Linguistics. She has taught many writing courses in many different spaces, and lives with her husband, two children, and golden doodle.