Toulouse

At night the words come
effortlessly
long forgotten but now:
     Je suis
     Je vais
     Je peux
Though in the red brick streets by day
I am stumbling
over words and uneven pathways and dead-end mazes

​I am stumbling.

The basilica rises across a plaza
weathered bricks
hollowed at the corners
I circle the garden gate
looking for a photo
as if to prove
     Je suis
     Je peux
     Je vais
But the pictures are just
an unframed steeple
a horizon
a close-up of bricks
 
I am stumbling.
 
The door to the transept is open, inviting
Eleven hundred years of prayer
in these walls and these windows,
witnesses to a thousand years of whispered pleas
sent out to whatever is beyond
these cement columns, built over a millennia
curve into magnificence
I tilt my head and wonder
how something so heavy can rise up
so effortlessly
 
I want to touch these walls
I want to feel their rough texture
I want to run my fingers over their pockets and edges
But
they are roped off to me
Instead, I kneel
genuflection an instinct
as is the prayer that bubbles forth
hands at heart, more than the words I can muster
     Je peux
     Je suis
     Je vais
Three other people in pews, sitting in states of quietude
I imagine that
together
we are praying
remembering--
that we are more than of this earth
In these thousand-year-old bricks
we sit with eternity
and the universes unfolding within it
 
Later, in the boulangerie, I ask for a chocolatine
effortless
     S’il vous plait
     Merci
     Au revoir
effortless
But when I try to say more
the words are stuck in the sludge of who I was
who I am not now
who I have forgotten
 
I am stumbling.
 
Until I slip into sleep
and the words come back
     effortless
and I remember that I, too, am eternity