The air bites right through my green knit sweater, and my thin California scarf only semi-helps. I feel it's warm, but just barely so I bury my chin in my chest and I shake at the chill like a pigeon ruffling feather. What is this feather? This chill with no ocean to run away to. It's a closed in feeling that comes more from the lack of an open blue straight-line horizon than it does from the cold. I never knew what the ocean was to me until now. I think. I miss it dearly. The salt smell it brings to the air. The undulation of waves. The sun disappearing on a distant water's edge. She was my center. My calm. My even keel in a stormy conscious. One can never see too far here. There's always tall buildings or a turn in the rue unless I find myself walking by the Champs de Mars. Or the Arc de Triomphe, but that's a rare line of sight, and the rest has this boat swaying port to starboard then back again and over and spinning on it's axis, lost at a tumultuous sea. This city needs an ocean. Only a river runs through it.
And that is not enough.
Not nearly.
