We’ll always have Paris

Photo by David Nickonvscanon.

We’ll always have Paris

Broke, almost, I came home by coach.
I’d gone there with my girlfriend of three years,
then left her three days after meeting you.

You liked me but I didn’t move you, couldn’t,
not as some could, and we slept together twice,
to prove it, in the studio I’d moved to

and where (there was a piano but no heating)
I’d sit, mid-Chopin, sobbing hoarse, raw sobs
I didn’t know I had inside me. Outside

Calais, the traffic thickened as we passed
a burnt-out pile-up, maybe twenty vehicles.

C’est quelque chose, our driver said to the guy
in the toll-booth, vraiment quelque chose.

Richard Meier's debut collection, Misadventure, will be published by Picador in March 2012 priced £8.99.