Love Everywhere

Last week in the Métro
near Saint Germain, amour sprawled
in gold cursive letters
across the station concourse
some feet stepping on it
others hurrying by,
alone I paused to look.

Clutching Lost Love in a Book Store
I ran to catch a train
Gare de Lyon,
platform people
leaned into train windows
waving desperately,
loss caught in their throats
as the train wrenched away.

It took me
across fields of sunflowers
frothing rivers fed by winter mountains
a landscape so green and solitary
I suddenly felt
I had lived one hundred years alone.

At home
life fades back into its usual pattern.
I eye the construction worker
ahead of me in the flower shop, his arm
spattered in white paint
up to elbow. He seems out of place –
or is it me –
hesitates between five sunflowers
on giant stems or a smaller
offering of tedious roses.

“Get the sunflowers,”
I want to yell,
all kinds of feelings clutching my throat,
amour sprawled across his forehead.