Exile

That night, all of Paris belonged to me. I was walking down from Montmartre, still lit from a first kiss above the flickering city—a kiss that bloomed from a shared smile in the Louvre.

Léonie. Dark eyes. Perfume. My heart kept the lamps lit all the way down to my quarter, the Marais. I crossed the Boulevard de Bonne-Nouvelle, passed my metro stop, unused tonight because walking preserved the spell. I thought that kiss would crack the frost, revive the stones, resound across the city in a burst of tulips.

Before my phone had died, she’d signed her glowing good night with one word: Élégance.

Then I turned on to my street.

Dark.

The keypad on my building was dead. No light, no sound. No entry. No neighbors to call. No way in. All that power in me—gone.

“Looks like an all-nighter,” I said out in the cold.

I started to walk again. In Paris, there was always light somewhere. A little thing like this wouldn’t break the spell. I could walk all night if I had to. No music. No books. Nothing to distract me.

I had walked the city all night nine years before. Back then, it had felt like a romantic adventure. But tonight I knew better. The city could be dangerous. I kept alert, choosing streets I knew would lead to the river.

Hardly a soul was out. I passed a café still open—its warm light spilling onto the pavement—I wanted to walk. The old iron lamps along the Seine were better. Their yellow glow cast wide arcs against the dark.

This night didn’t need to be an adventure. It was simply a matter of waiting out the dark.

I kept to the high sidewalks above the river. Too easy to be cornered below. Rats scuttled near the quay stones. The wind off the water made me hunch in my coat. At the tip of Île Saint-Louis, at a place called Louis Aragon, the city could not hide from me. Soon this would become the usual meeting place for my closest friends—but I had not met them yet. It was just me and the city.

Notre-Dame and its gargoyles peered over the sleeping rooftops at me.

A man, too, was watching me from the shadows behind.

Then gone.

I thought I knew him.

I crossed to Île de la Cité. Footsteps echoed mine, just slightly off beat.

Léonie’s voice wafted and vanished. The spell was lifting like smoke.

Then another voice came—closer, deeper:

“Have you forgotten why you came here?”

I couldn’t tell if it came from me or someone near me.

I ducked into a café open late in the Latin Quarter, trying to steady myself.

As I sat, so did someone across from me. A young man in a vintage suit. Narrow tie. Hair swept back like the 1920s.

He lit a match for a cigarette and looked up.

I knew that face.

He watched me, waiting to see what I would say.

“So this is what it’s like to meet a ghost,” I said.

“I’m quite the opposite,” he replied, unimpressed.

“Is it really you? Or just an impersonator?”

“I could ask you the same. Are you a writer, or a tourist with a notebook?”

“I’m trying to see things. To understand.”

“Good answer.”

He lit the cigarette and exhaled slow.

“So what are you doing out here tonight?”

“I got locked out of my apartment.”

“So you’re an exile.”

“I guess I am.”

“Good. Now you might finally start to learn something. Not as others have told you—but how it actually is.”

I hesitated, then said it:

“I came to Paris to follow your footsteps.”

He didn’t flinch.

“Hero worship’s only good as a one-sided game. I’ll let it slide. Tonight’s a fine night to start as your own hero.”

“I just wanted to see the city the way you saw it.”

“You can’t. And you shouldn’t. I’ve been watching you—you’re this close to missing the whole damn thing.”

“I must be going crazy. Was it the wine? The kiss? I kissed a girl tonight.”

“Good. Better to be drunk on something—wine, youth, romance…”

He slammed his palm on the table.

“But you’re missing it! Hey! Two coffees over here! You can’t walk through a night like this half-asleep. You’ve got to earn it. What’s holding you back? Let’s see some guts.”

I looked away, ashamed.

“Maybe I made a mistake coming here. Maybe I’m not ready.”

“You’re not listening. A writer must listen.”

The waiter arrived without expression, set down two black coffees that steamed like they’d just come from a darker, stranger world. The great man leaned forward, eyes lit, and took a long drag.

“Everything you’re writing, everything you are, the girl, all of it—will be decided tonight.”

I drank from the cup. It warmed me. Hot to touch. Fire in the pit.

“Well it won’t be decided by you. I’m going it alone from here on out. You had your crazy years. I’m going to capture this town in a way you never could. From here on I decide what this will be. I’m done with holding back.”

He leaned back and smiled.

“There we go. I like you, kid.”

“Shut up,” I said.

I got up storming and tossed two coins on the table. Two for the River Styx.

I glanced back once. The café was dark. All the wicker chairs were stacked up against the windows.

The streets of Paris fell away from the touch of my attention. I don’t remember exactly where I was in that hour of the wolf. The names of places deserted me. All doors were locked. The winds of thought blew in every direction. The star of clear intention could not track the senseless meaning of my steps. In casting him off, I had cast off the part of me that knew how to fight with reality. My ego cracked, and the flood came forth—monsters and demons free to roam the city at large, feeding on the fear that my exile-state generated at every doubtful turn. I found myself in this labyrinth with no weapon and no thread of gold.

A crooked bell rang once from a tower I couldn’t see. I turned and the street behind me was gone, replaced by an alley I’d never entered. Graffiti slithered on the walls as if newly painted by invisible hands. One phrase repeated in dripping black: Il n’y a pas de retour.

There is no return.

I kept walking. The moon hung lower than it should have. Pale faces passed without footsteps. Somewhere, behind a shutter, a radio played a war song in German.

Then I saw her.

Léonie.

Not as she was—but in a gown of pale fire, standing beneath a bridge I couldn’t name. She said nothing. Just looked at me. Her dark eyes pierced me.

“You should have listened,” the voice returned—her voice.

“I am listening,” I whispered, but to whom?

I turned my collar up and pressed on, the stones beneath my feet softening into mud. Paris was no longer the city of light. It was the interior of my skull.

Then came a door.

A narrow green door standing in the middle of the street with no building to hold it. It was slightly open. Light poured from within.

I stepped closer. On the other side, I thought I saw myself—older, steadier, eyes fierce and full of something I couldn’t name. He beckoned. The door widened. A choice.

“The right poet in the right place becomes invincible,” he said.

I stepped through.

The city was still there—but quieter now, cleaner. My heartbeat steadied.

I found myself back in the west part of Saint-Germain, sitting against the wall of a long-extinguished café near rue de Vaugirard. For a moment, I didn’t know how I’d gotten there. But I was here. Alive. Whole.

“I am that poet,” I said. “This is my place.”

The words startled me. Not because I didn’t believe them—but because I did.

I tried to stand, but my legs were asleep. I stumbled forward—and there it was: a lightning cable plugged into a portable power bank, abandoned by some drunken reveler.

I sat again and plugged the charging end into my dead phone. It blinked with a signal. I closed my eyes and leaned against the wall again. I breathed deeply, centering myself. I had almost fallen asleep when I felt my phone vibrate.

The colors of the glass filled my face.

Léonie had sent a message:

“I woke up in the middle of the night thinking of you. I hope you are alright.”

I got up. I was alright.

There was no need to ask her for help. I would keep walking the city, and I would see her very soon.

There was writing to do, and I was finding it all in the light breaking over rooftops of Paris.

The power was back.