a/n: i spent the summer studying french but some of it might still be off.

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juillet (july)

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we haltingly speak of surrealism in our broken french, of love and
brie and clocks, horloges, but finally have no words to express
too-perfect moons over too-perfect top hats, of those empty suns
the painters must have glimpsed en rêves. our teacher comes to the
rescue. soft and fluent, she laughs and gestures out a scene from a dali
painting she had seen once- a boy picking up the surface of a sea like
silk, like silvered cloth. pour voir, she says, in order to see. i hate
stories like that, the ones that have no beginning or end, the ones
i remember as a series of scenes. a movie i saw once, the title i’ll never
remember- a family in china before the revolution. something began,then
something else collapsed, and i still dream of the grandfather weeping
over his own coffin, the wife weeping over her dead husband. a mistress
and true love, the crows taking flight and the sky sliced by overhead
clotheslines, like the lines of light slicing eyes by awaking. is it enough?
ça vaut le coup. coup de foudre. perhaps for the french, it’s lightning
that lashes sight to suns, to the sight-lashing explosion de l’amour.
she says again- pour voir- perhaps dali paints what he sees, or at least
sees what he paints. aime-moi si c’est possible. it sounds like half a chorus
of an old love song.