115/365 12/14/2025

Avec. Avec non. The words repeated in my mind as we walked bundled into one another along one of the beautiful Paris boulevards. The beauty of them. The simplicity. I dipped my head and committed to memory a quartet of aromas: her hair smelling of cedar and “fresh” since she’d used my shampoo. Skin of chilled lilac. The wooly wonder of her scarf and coat, each picked from a pile in the back of a New York thrift shop literal hours before we left. I breathed her deep and whispered the words tumbling in my mind. “Avec. Avec non.”

“What’s that?” Her voice a muffled lilt through the scarf and her coat’s upturned collar. 

“With. Without,” I whispered. “Avec. Avec non.” 

She stopped and chuckled. “That’s not how it works,” she said. “Avec non? Where did that come from?” 

“With. Without. Or not with. Avec non.”

“Oh my god. No. With: avec. Without: sans. It’s sans. And even if you were trying to do what you’re trying to do, it would be Pas avec. With. Not with. Pas avec.” She looked at me with a look I can now label as a mix of pity and disbelief, and the next morning I was forced to learn a new French phrase: Je vais à Prague sans toi. I am going to Prague without you.