My dorm room is a mess — lengths of string run from wall to wall, and I move quickly through the room, hanging printouts of the photos I’ve taken today with paper clips because I don’t have any clothespins.
When I’m finished, I step back to the door frame so I can view the whole room. It kind of looks like I live with Sherlock Holmes — except that the images are not crime-scene photos of dead bodies or random pieces of evidence.
They are photos of Serena, mostly. Beginning with her in the courtyard of the Louvre, just outside the pyramid, averting her gaze as she thinks about her father, and what this city meant to him. In each one that follows, a shred or a suggestion of Paris hovers in the background — sometimes in focus, other times blurred like it is under water. Like the city is somehow decorating her as her heart continues its quest to get away from the pain that brought her here in the first place. The photos form the story of her day, a sequence capturing all the emotions that she felt as she set about her Romance Tour. Still, I think something is missing.
It is then my eye goes to a few rejected photos, placed carelessly on my nightstand, because I did not think they were right for the project — they did not fit the theme. But something is drawing me to them now, and I walk over …
They’re the photos of the noticeboard for “Lonely Hearts and Missed Connections” that I slyly took while we were in Shakespeare and Company …
To H.,
I will never understand how I can see you every day and still feel like I miss you.
To my dumpling,
even sardines taste different now.
To Adam,
I wish you all the happiness in the world, but I could not make the memory of seeing you marry someone else
Please forgive me
S:
I feel like I chased you all over the world. I just wish I now knew how to get home
Is there anyone in Paris who wants to have coffee and talk about botany?
K,
At first, I thought you had intruded on my life. It’s only now I realize my life was on pause, waiting for you — now, it is stopped.
I don’t know if it was Paris that healed my heart, or if it was you.
I read each message a couple times. I have to squint and hold the image right up to my face to see some of them, and there are at least three with handwriting so messy that I give up.
Each one is a message from one sad heart to another, all of them very specific. But, altogether, the noticeboard feels like a single message, just for me — telling me something I didn’t know I already knew.
It’s better to reach out to someone, than to always be running away.