Hotel Paris by Alexandra Ernst
(The Suite Frederic Chopin)
Inside the great composer’s eyes,
circled in lines and sweeping contours,
a storm rages.
From the very pigments
brushed darkly around
his temples,
time spirals backwards.
He considers history:
the life of a woman
passionately loved
in this city that is not his own.
They are young,
very young and very much in love.
Who can protect them?
Music of bodies
undulating and pulsing
as the monument outside
stands taller and taller
on this spring afternoon.
Their love grows bolder
and more pronounced with
the shadows that come
before evening.
Faintly dizzy from the
feeling of such space
and the need to be free,
they do not fall off the edge
of the world but almost…
They catch each other
and hold tight.
It is that simple.
Alexandra’s poetry has appeared in IO Magazine, The Minetta Review, and The Anthology of New England Writers. Though she has lived in Paris for the past fifteen years, she spends each summer hiking with her husband and two small children in the Adirondacks and in her former home state of Vermont.
