I Had Already Arrived
︎︎︎ Parisa Torkaman
︎ June 10, 2025
I said I’d go to the café to feel less separate.
Three hours passed.
The map said twenty minutes.
I lost time the way we lose faith, our bobby pins—
not gradually, but in a single gesture.
I thought I might find it again shoved into the crevice of masonry,
stubbing Vogues Bleus just beneath the cornice.
I carried a book by Ouspensky. I didn’t read it.
Held it as if the weight might absolve me.
I stared at people’s shoes instead.
I saw a girl in Repetto flats and thought:
I should get a job. A life. A husband.
Somewhere, blurred arrondissements.
I smiled at a man then wanted an orgasm, for punctuation.
I carried a trench, a woollen scapular, a paperback,
rolling papers, a novice’s silence, a list I never checked.
I always pack for transformation.
The tables were fake marble, chipped at the corners,
positioned under the nave of Haussmann façades.
Real despair.
Twenty euros for a cappuccino
because Kate Moss sat here in ’97.
Men in cassocks—black soutanes,
buttons like rosary beads down the front.
Women, in white coifs tucked under navy trench coats.
They were location-scouting their lives.
Everyone was mid-homily in a film I wasn’t in.
I love architecture because it stays.
Even in ruin, it remains consecrated.
Unlike me. I fold.
I loop the same Springsteen songs
until the falsetto becomes liturgy.
Until the repetition annoys me.
I had already arrived the moment I said I would.
The temple had always been a café.
And I had come dressed for communion:
an outfit planned the night before,
as if silk might keep me from vanishing.
The waitress didn’t see me.
I left before the sun could touch my skin the wrong way.
I took the ashtray.
Porcelain. Green font. Made in France.
Three hours passed.
The map said twenty minutes.
I lost time the way we lose faith, our bobby pins—
not gradually, but in a single gesture.
I thought I might find it again shoved into the crevice of masonry,
stubbing Vogues Bleus just beneath the cornice.
I carried a book by Ouspensky. I didn’t read it.
Held it as if the weight might absolve me.
I stared at people’s shoes instead.
I saw a girl in Repetto flats and thought:
I should get a job. A life. A husband.
Somewhere, blurred arrondissements.
I smiled at a man then wanted an orgasm, for punctuation.
I carried a trench, a woollen scapular, a paperback,
rolling papers, a novice’s silence, a list I never checked.
I always pack for transformation.
The tables were fake marble, chipped at the corners,
positioned under the nave of Haussmann façades.
Real despair.
Twenty euros for a cappuccino
because Kate Moss sat here in ’97.
Men in cassocks—black soutanes,
buttons like rosary beads down the front.
Women, in white coifs tucked under navy trench coats.
They were location-scouting their lives.
Everyone was mid-homily in a film I wasn’t in.
I love architecture because it stays.
Even in ruin, it remains consecrated.
Unlike me. I fold.
I loop the same Springsteen songs
until the falsetto becomes liturgy.
Until the repetition annoys me.
I had already arrived the moment I said I would.
The temple had always been a café.
And I had come dressed for communion:
an outfit planned the night before,
as if silk might keep me from vanishing.
The waitress didn’t see me.
I left before the sun could touch my skin the wrong way.
I took the ashtray.
Porcelain. Green font. Made in France.
Parisa Torkaman lives and writes in Paris, France.