Maybe live in Paris with him. Maybe spend your days in another bright loft with your cats and your fruit, your quiet piles of books, your gazes out the window at people punctuating sidewalks below. Maybe give up your mildly wild life. Maybe learn French for real this time and teach French people yoga. Glean an appropriate playlist, give up trying to articulate your half-formed ideas of Bigger Than in a tongue not your own, resort to the language of your hands pressing suggestions on their cotton-covered skins. Or target Americans and Brits, the asana addicts on holiday or those who’ve wandered to the same city also in the hope of making a change, becoming refined and intimidating in that arrogant expat way. Learn to stop cringing at the fog of Gauloises smoke. On your nights alone, stride the streets unnoticed like you did back in England and when strange men say strange things, give them that blank look like you speak no language at all, perhaps have never even heard human speech. Live in your loneliness as it cracks with each sunrise. Then wake to throw open windows in your runaway studio.
