I saw ghosts in the metro this morning.
Eyelids straining against a week of late nights and 6am wake-ups, my eyelashes changed a man in careful tweed into the sage of the Arthurian hills.
Blink, and he was a man with a carbon-copy briefcase again, mais je l'ai vu, I saw something scaly breathe fire behind his eyes.
The girl with too-thin arms, sitting with fingers caressing a cigarette and her blouse cut so low that suddenly I knew what emaciation meant, she turned her head just so and I saw the blush that would have appeared along her neck had she been a well-fed maiden carrying feed to tend horses,had she remembered a word of who she was before the television told her so.
Ghosts of alleycats and silk-clad minstrels prowled about the seats, hanging from the windows, their sleeves flapping as we sped north through Paris.
Eyes wide, I saw each separate swath of ghostly silk, and through them the unseeing eyes of the passengers.
At the end of the line, I was alone with the ghosts, and a carbon-copy briefcase of my own, brimming with unread documentation.
There was no paladdin in sight.