Dear Stranger,
France has given me a small cruelty called pain au chocolat.
Pain, but filled with chocolate.
I laughed at the name until I bit into one and understood that perhaps this is how life prefers to make its jokes: warm, flaky, and leaving crumbs all over your coat.
Later, I climbed onto a merry-go-round beneath the Eiffel Tower. It was not nearly as gentle as it looked. The horses rose and fell, the music grew crooked, and Paris dissolved around me.
Gold became blue. Red bled into cream. Faces stretched into ribbons of light.
For a few seconds, I could no longer tell where one color ended and another began. The whole world became a new kind of vision, one that could only exist while spinning.
I think I finally understand why children ask to go faster.
Sometimes the world is easier to love when it stops holding still.
Anonymous
