Melina Said

Melina said Paris wasn’t the city of love.
Not the warm clichés or slow-dancing ghosts—
but a city of broken hearts,
stacked like stones along the Seine,
quiet as unspoken names.

She said it like a sigh
behind her camera lens,
catching sorrow in soft grayscale
while the rest of us played at romance,
fumbling through the poetry of cheap wine.

She had that look—
the kind that sees everything
but judges nothing.
Eyes like shutters half-open.
You never quite knew
if you were being studied or understood.

We stayed friends.
Because with Melina,
friendship was never small.
It was stitched with café chairs,
cigarette ash,
and the silence that comes
after real things are said.

And in that silence,
she told me the real Paris:
where lovers leave but memory stays,
where every bridge is a promise
someone couldn’t keep,
where the light falls uneven—
but always beautifully.

I still carry that picture:
her in half-light,
shoulder turned to the lens,
smile like a secret.

Paris may break hearts,
but Melina taught me—
sometimes that’s
where the truest art begins.