burn, baby, burn

there is a light that never goes out

We were in Paris the day Notre Dame caught fire. My father, stepbrother and I touring France: Omaha Beach bunkers; gilded piano at Palace of Versailles; secret passages carved in Château Gaillard limestone.

In France, without the one person who should have been there.

She’d have loved this, I thought, as I savored my daily pain du chocolate. The closest my half-French mother came was Québec. I was twelve. We ate crepes. Spoke French. Badly.

Many fires have burned since then. Many, many fires. Murders, uprisings, pandemic, war. Family fires: dementia, decline, death. And always, a daughter’s love—smoldering embers, eternal.