Journalist ca. 2013: Why did you move to Paris?
KP:  My girlfriend lives in Paris... I don't know. I don't know why. 

after dinner, too tired to do dishes, to move bottles or vegetables, i sit at the counter
thinking of kevin parker and his girlfriend melody living in paris 

having breakfast in the catacombs, skeletons at the bottom of an elevator
shaft. they bring their own porridge and indulge the promise they made to remember

fear, though both naturally anxious. he doesn't speak french and her english is just okay. she shimmies
rhythm from a tambourine, seated on the carpet once they're home. the window over cobblestones


and a storm. he dresses a salad with mustard seeds. his hair ombré, her hair ombré.
once he said: let the song be an infant and its innocence rack you.

we've all been destroyed by that kind. the final nerve collapsing,
the desolation of post-its and other types of remembering


finger a hole at the rib. though we want what we want
dumbly on.


when they make love does he close his eyes; she wears crescents and crosses in her sleep.
beauty was a stranger scabbed with acne,

now swans nuzzle in a nest of vegan fur tucked in the corner of their room
swallows recite rumi from the balustrade, and the moon rises full above the veranda. 

we are children till the day we die, drawing sleep in burnt sienna.
though the world’s every move is designed to unravel that center,


the mystery gouges—the heart of ants, the shards of bone,
the why.

Remy Ramirez (she/her) has an MA in creative writing from the University of Texas at Austin. Her poems have been featured in The Southern Review, Room, Breakwater Review, and The Miscreant; her essays in Marie Claire and Cherry Bombe Mag; and her celebrity interviews in NYLON, BUST, and Tidal (where she is currently the executive editor). Her podcasts, The Patrauma Party and Sign of the Crime, can be found anywhere you get podcasts. She lives in Sedona, AZ because the thrifting is good and so is the karaoke.