Abandoned… Package

by Suzanne Allen


Line Twelve gasps to a stop at Trinité, just three stops before Charity’s stop. She listens three times to the tiled echo of the conductor’s instructions before she understands: colis abandonné à Pigalle, il faut descendre. There’s an abandoned package; she must get off the train. Riders trickle out into the bright but cloudy evening on Place d’Estienne d’Orves, as if destined. She pulls up her faith and hope, finds the taxi at the front of the line in front of l’Église de la Sainte Trinité; finally a sign that doesn’t say stop. La Cave Café isn’t far, but this doesn’t stop the driver from first grumbling about the traffic, le travaux, the impending J.O., les Jeux Olympiques. She hears the word, games, gathers herself and fastens her seatbelt; Charity can’t be rushed. She waits for a break in his clouds before asking his name, where he’s from. Haidi, he says, de la Tunisie, and Charity doesn’t miss a beat, says she makes couscous poulet every Easter, then watches him smile in the rearview mirror. My ex taught me, she confesses. He was from Tunisia, too. Then Haidi speaks of spices and lamb, his children, the sea, then he’s dropping her off on the Place Robert-Verdier, says, merci, bonne soirée, don’t give up; on’sait jamais.


* * * * *

Haidi: provider of guidance, leader.

Suzanne Allen is a writing teacher and artist born and raised in the San Gabriel Valley near Los Angeles. She holds an MFA from California State University in Long Beach, where she still lives. In 2021, she published a full-length collection of mostly pandemic poems, We Wash Our Hands, and her collection of Paris poems, Awkward, was released in February, 2024. Others appear widely online and in print. The "Charity" sequence is part of a larger series of self-caricatures from her forthcoming collection, Attempts at Exhausting a Crush, to be released late spring, 2025.