Paris Syndrome

For years I pictured freedom like a drug that could kill me. 

It was enough to shut my eyes and imagine it. A foreign city.

Handing over a card and booking a room. Not even a nice one.

Dusty curtains. Moths in the rug. I didn’t care who died there.

All I wanted was a bed with cool sheets and the door shut. 

Back then, a minute in an unlit stairwell felt like a lifetime,

trickling grain by grain into a giant vase. I couldn’t even picture

a night. When I got what I wanted, I felt nothing. Is this it –

I asked the older girl with years of experience, as if I had missed

something crucial. She spoke of pleasure like a heist: a bar of fudge

you had to acquire, slinking out of view in the department store

and tucking one into a shirt sleeve. And then what? Then you sit

on the rusty swing set by the derelict estate, weeds poking into 

your dress, and unwrap it, taking small bites, until you feel sick.

Yanita Georgieva is the author of Small Undetectable Thefts, which received the Eric Gregory Prize in 2024. She is a recipient of the Out-Spoken Prize and an alum of Southbank New Poets Collective and the London Library Emerging Writers Scheme.