FOR POETRY

Simplistic people labeled them as deviants, but the reality is quite different. It's sometimes a departure to know oneself and at the same time to get away from everything and everyone in order to truly live and come back much more mature than before, simply because one will have had time to think better.

To assert that a love story is a missed encounter with someone, doesn't the story first have to have begun, and therefore the encounter has not been completely missed? In this case, it is not really the encounter that is missed, nor the encounter with this person, but what follows: we have not been able to make something of it. True encounters are continued encounters. The first encounter is therefore less important than the talent and ingenuity that we will be able to deploy to turn it into a story. It is only then, when at the heart of this story, we are found wanting, when we fail to understand the other or to keep our promises, that we can, I believe, speak of a missed encounter. There is no such thing as a chance, there are only encounters. It carries a dangerous implication: certain human beings are meant to meet, we would just have to leave it to fate. A missed encounter would then be a missed one with one's destiny. This is to minimize the importance of the story itself...

By default, you should keep the window shades of the plane open so your row-mates can see out the window and the miracle of human flight. People can request it closed if they want to nap and it can be lowered if the glare is intense, but otherwise, if you close it, you are ignoring how cool it is to look out of the window in an airplane. Window seat controls the shade and gets the outer armrest, middle gets both inner armrests, and the aisle gets the aisle armrest and a little extra legroom. With that said, some people are jet lagged or want some extra rest, so they close the window; the wall is nice to rest on. Some may not have actively chosen a window seat and don’t like flying/get motion sickness, so they close the window. And those who can’t be separated from their phones for more than 10 seconds, so they close the window to block the glare on their device or seatback TV. Others buy window seats for the sole purpose of looking outside. That’s the point of flying, otherwise I could...

Have you ever noticed that we are always waiting for the result of an action, an event, projected toward the future, our eyes fixed on the outcome, on the arrival, waiting for something else, for someone else, for something better, for somewhere else. I climb the mountain, thinking only of what I will see from the summit. I hurry to read the book to find out more, to know what happens next, always what happens next, always going further. I ask myself: "How does it end?" I wait for the train, I don't live. I'm tense toward the train's arrival, my neck craned toward the bend where it will appear. "Is it coming? " And of course, once on the train, I can't wait to get there! At work, I wait for breaks, the end of the day, the weekend, vacations, retirement. "When I've met my soulmate...", "Ah, if only I were free", "When I have money", "When I've moved",  "When I have time"... or else it's ...

So, they sent another hero to follow her. Well, he would try. This one was quieter than the last one. He negotiated the twists and turns of the cave without the slightest tinkle. "So, is he coming?" she whispered. "Almost there," said a faint voice just behind her head. "I can see the tip of his shadow," said another. Her gaze returned to the stone man in front of her. His body hunched, as if ready to leap, one arm raised, a protective gesture that had proved useless. Another adventurer, frozen forever. She still wished that one of them would prove different.  This new adversary approaching, would he speak first? Would he take the time to announce himself, to explain his intrusion, to make sure he was here for right reasons? She turned her back and waited. A tiny snake's head rose in front of her face. "I saw a shoulder," the reptile said in its reptilian voice. "Strong. Tanned." "Like all the others," she sighed. "An...