I thought my sojourn in Paris would enlighten me.

My first visit to here had been a short vacation; enough to see the sights but not to breath the air; enough to get a taste, but not enough to satisfy my hunger. I needed Paris. This is where I was to be forever. That opening I saw through the terminal, the feeling underneath my blood in my fingertips, a heart breathing with the lungs. I could feel my body morphing into different shoes. The language trickled down my body, surrounding me in a beauty that English never taught me. To me, nothing could not compare to the French language.

I knew nothing. I was a young American girl visiting to study, to take just a small glimpse at the prodigious beauty that I longed to be my life. Even with my less than 100 verbs, I felt home.

Back "home", my finance is still waiting for me to call. (The sun here does not shine on his diamond.) I had promised him my stay would be nothing more than a learning experience; a time to reexamine my life. My love was immutable. That was what gold promised. It was the handcuffs to the woman, locked with diamonds whose facets glimmered, reflecting all the promise I made when I said "yes." (shook my head "no" as to be honest)

I could feel everything slip away in the Parisian sun. My feet wanted to walk away. My hands wanted to touch freely. My mind wanted to speak everything I could never say before. Someone was here who could love me like I needed; under the wind dried sheets, in a room painted blue, with flowers on the dresser.

This is why rings are fitted to your finger. If not, they would slip away. With every wave and gesture, they would be lost beneath the ground, buried like a dead mans treasure. My mother had lost her ring. I can't remember if I was alive yet, or just forming inside. It was in my neighbors backyard, lost in the grass, maybe destroyed by a mowers blades. I believe the ring was an omen of the inevitable affair that led to the destruction of my mothers marriage and my fathers trust in woman. My grandmother was also a woman who had never bothered with a golden promise very long. Her heart was never full by the love of men. Even on her deathbed, she was juggling a husband and the milkman between three children who did not share the same last name. Was I cursed as well? Could the flesh and bones on my finger keep a diamond erect without falter? Would my heart be just the same, unable to love forever even with the unfaltering desire?

Maybe it was the shadowing fear that pushed me into an early engagement. I had been with Edward as long as I could remember. We met my freshman year and it seemed to stick that way. I was so content, so ready for security, for stability. Before him, my life was a world wind of cigarette smoke and dark townhouse rooms with writing on the walls. There was more freedom than I thought desirable. There was too much heartache to be happy. I wasn't singing as loudly.

He swarmed into my life, like a tide rushing in, creating the brick and mortar I had for so long been looking for.

Yet, here I was, 22, fantasizing a smoke filled café, drinking express at noon with a new man serenading my heart every day.

Here I was in Paris. Here is where I lost my ring.

It would be a lie to say I wasn't expecting this. Not to be brash, but men commonly fall in love with me. There eyes see me as, at first, simple. There is not much to me: my skin is slightly pink, my eyes are green, my hair falls barley to my boney shoulders that can not bear the body of woman. It might be the aura of normal that surrounds me. I am the quintessential example of ordinary. Sometimes, I think that's all a man wants. Someone normal.

Two weeks off the plane, my mind was in French, my classes were patterns, the streets guided me to familiarity that never existed on the highway behind my house. Two weeks off the plane I had cried on the phone when Edward told me he loved me, lied about how much I needed him, and left him full with the idea that Paris could only hold me for so long. Two weeks off the plane, I met James.

He stood behind me one wensday afternoon, waiting for a crepe, something I did almost every day. I took the food in my hand (the ring was in a box somewhere) and I turned right into him. I could see his blue eyes were deeper than a sea. I could tell his olive skin was a natural glow from the eurpoean sun. His movements were so cliché, the slow motion of the lips turning into a smile. Embarsseed, I walked around him, muttering an English "excuse me," forgetting my fluency.

It did not take him long to catch me by the jacket sleeve. The blue mixed well with his fingertips. My mouth awed, like I had seen a ghost.

"Do not walk away," he spoke, seeming as eager as I was, "I do not even know your name."

What harm could I have fathomed? "Rachel" was never a dirty word. I never hurt anyone with a simple whispear of my name. I never impressed upon anyway, such a simple name, such a simple girl.

Our first date was to the top of the effile tower on a windy day that was most un enjoyable. He laughed at my half French, and a applauded his fluent English.

preferred his native tongue, even when things got lost in translation. The important things always translated correctly. (Embrassez-moi, Rester, Je t'aime.)

I didn't even know him. James was as foreign as the country to me. I did not know his mothers name, how many times he had been in love, where he resided as a child, why he knew so much English. Everything that I once was sure of in myself became ambivalence with James. He changed how much I cared for the little things, and showed me what it felt like to be at home in my heart.

My skin melted slowly off my fingers. Flesh could no longer honestly hold a golden promise. Bones were to weak to support the diamond lie, and my heart was to heavy to participate in such folly. I could not love Edward. I looked into James's eyes. I could not love Edward.

It is strange to regain feeling in parts once cut off from the rest of the body. The brain forgets after so long. But phantom limbs appear again and again, like the feeling between my fingers. To feel the sheets clutched inside my hands! To feel flesh against flesh! What was this new arousal? Two fingers intertwined not by a gold band but flesh and flesh alone. To have promises etched into the heart, rather than into a diamond's shimmer and shine.

This morning it has been 6 weeks since my feet landed on French soil. It has been 4 since I met James. Could such haste be the death of me? Was this the right limb to break off? Or are phantoms limbs called phantoms for a reason? Are they not the ghost of the past? The things we must walk away from? I am not sure.

Rather than question, I have ripped up my plane ticket and let it fall in the wind. I have lost my ring in the grass on the other side of town. I have kissed a new man good morning in a blue room with roses at the window. I have decided to grow a new limb.