The City of my Love
Category A: Highly Commended (2023) Monash Short Story Writing Competition
Author: Liana Wong
When most people talk about the love of their life, they talk about a person.
They’ll shamelessly ramble on about their significant other, mesmerised by their beauty, or intelligence, or just their mere existence. It’s amazing, really, how lost they can get in the thought of their love.
‘Most people’ doesn’t apply to me.
My mum would agree that my one true love has never been a certain person. She’s always, “Honey, that’s not love,” this, and “Darling, you’re too young to know love,” that.
She doesn’t get it. She doesn’t see it like I do.
She doesn’t see Paris like I do.
It may seem cliché for the love of my life to be the literal city of love, but I don’t see it like that. When I say I’m in love with Paris, I don’t mean it in a ‘I love croissants and berets and the Eiffel Tower’ way. I mean it in a ‘it’s the only place that makes me really feel’ way.
I fell in love with its humble cafes that emit a warm light and hot, oven-heated air, even on the coldest of winter mornings and hottest of summer afternoons. The type of cafe that captivates your attention and stops you in your tracks, pulling you in until you’re stuck for hours with a mouth-watering pastry and a classic, worn-out novel.
I fell in love with it’s gorgeous balcony views, from evening dusk sunsets that blush the sky a tulip rose, to morning dawn sunrises which blanket the previous dark in a sparkly gold. I could lose myself so easily up there, with a melodic chorus floating out of an upstairs neighbour’s window and the softest of throws wrapped around me while I lounge in the greeting air.
I fell in love with its simplicity in sophistication; the effortless beauty of locals promenading by La Seine, the unwanted attention of its most alluring little street stalls, the precise detail in the stunning architecture that surround you wherever you wander. Everywhere you glance is elegance shining without asking to be noticed.
My heart is overwhelmed by my endless love for the exquisite place. The feeling of it fills me in a way nothing else can, completing me when I feel lost within myself.
In a way, ‘most people’ does apply to me.
Shamelessly rambling is so easy when I proclaim my fondness for Paris. ‘Mesmerised’ doesn’t even begin to describe how bewitched I’ve become by its charm. I can forget myself for hours on end when lost in the mere thought of the city, my mind graced by its presence.
By Paris, I am fulfilled. There’s nothing else I want, nothing else I need when I’m standing within my first love, surrounded by all the reasons that have made me infatuated by it.
When most people talk about the love of their life, they talk about a person.
My love is a place, my place. And, oh, how I could talk about it for days.