The Frailty of a Google Image Collection

My wife and I went to Paris for our Honeymoon. When we visited Montmartre we got in a little argument. Two years later, late at night, I  found myself desperately wanting those moments back. For the comfort of nostalgia and in an attempt to change my memory, I search "Montmartre" on the Google image search. I got page after page of images, but nothing really helped. I had quickly amassed a digital collection of images, but as I looked through them, the moment that I was trying to reconstruct and change at the same time, kept a distance from me. I was hoping that because I could not return to the place when I wanted to, that the collection would somehow put me there and allow me to understand the moment, change it, deal with, etc. 

I was unsuccessful.

This is a sampling of the Google results I found that night and I poem that came out of my frustration.   

The 18th Arrondissement

Montmartre, you and your guided tours, your lines and dots on maps,
Picasso’s house, Dali’s drawings, the Moulin Rouge, La Sacré Cœur.

You and your moments of understanding on the cobblestone roads that
surreptitiously draw patrons further and further up, until they must walk

down those stairs. You, whom now cannot be put together by a Google
image search, but remains as a fragmented memory, scarred by words

I cannot remember but know were simply awful. You, holding us in
your ancient hands, sculpted by the brushes of painters, by the orgasms

of lovers. You didn’t know I would get so mad when the Metro station
left the park but stayed on the map. You didn’t know what to do when

you heard me get angry and saw her block the perfect breeze with her hands,
turn from your offerings and mine, and begin to walk away, heading towards

the faint shadow of the Eiffel tower. You could have screamed as I am tonight,
and slapped my face with your hardened hand, telling me to fold the map up

and use my arms to hold her. But you remained silent, allowed the distant
ringing of a police car, the creepily lucid song of the Carousal and the moans

of others feeling the city move beneath their moving bodies, to block out her subtle
tears and scarring cheeks. You, this place, this city, this feeling, this sky,

her hand which momentarily left mine. This futile search for pictures of you to
somehow change this memory I have, to somehow remake that moment when

I knew what it meant to love and destroy; to see you, that place, in perfect stillness
and know that a breeze is touching your face and my body inside of yours.

You—perfectly crumbled before me, hammer in my hand, digital camera by my side,
watching as you walk away and that church, that hill behind us, that perfect place,

blurred by the spilled paint of an idiot’s anger. You cannot be found tonight, though
you sleep in the next room, though you wake up across the sea; though hundreds of

thousands of images are retrieved, you, that place, gently holding my hand, then letting
go, is lost on a canvas washed, but still maintaining some semblance of a marred

moment. You. Montmartre. You. I cannot say sorry enough, so let your hands fall to your
side and let your face be dried by the sun, let this hand touch your cheek. At least.