Today, I'm leaving France

I tried to learn French properly—five new words a day, lined up like obedient children in a notebook, running off the moment I open my mouth. I drank red wine with dinner like that might fix me. It didn't. It just made me feel like merde with an accent. I never ate the croissants. Never snapped a baguette under my arm, wrapped in yesterday’s newspaper.(Thank you, Celiac—a lifelong exile) I never stood in a gravel square throwing metal balls with old men like we had nowhere else to be. I did not become more French. But sometimes, I swear there is a woman inside me now who did. Un petit peu. She eats cheese slowly, and does not apologize when dinners stretch over hours like time is something yours to spend. She wears my body like a borrowed coat, orders macarons I won't taste, drinks café au lait on loud Parisian terraces like she was born from the noise. Today, I am leaving France, but she is not coming with me. Or maybe she is the only thing I get to keep.