Poème de la semaine: Une Collection de la Fondatrice Poem 42, Toujours un Étranger: When Belonging is a Foreign Language

Author: Sofia Pantazi, 2023 - Current | Olive Trees

Each week, Sofia Pantazi shares a poem from her book Olive Trees, which she is currently working on. Inspired by her Dutch and Greek heritage, personal experiences from childhood to the present, and her life living in Paris for the past three years. Through her emotions and reflections, she invites readers to explore moments of vulnerability, strength, and growth—capturing the beauty of life’s everyday journey.

Olive Trees, Poem 42, October 2024

Toujours un Étranger: When Belonging is a Foreign Language

There are cities that welcome you like a long-lost friend, and there are cities that wear you down—slowly, beautifully, and mercilessly. Paris, for me, has always been the latter. “Toujours un étranger” was written on a melancholic October day, seated on a borrowed sofa, with a blanket that wasn't mine but somehow offered fleeting comfort. It is a love letter, a confession, and a quiet rebellion all wrapped into one—about identity, displacement, and the strange intimacy of European cities that both hold and reject you.

The poem begins with me in a place of quiet emotional disarray, on a rainy autumn day, not quite at home, but not quite lost either. There’s something deeply nostalgic about being wrapped in a blanket that smells unfamiliar, reminding you you’re somewhere you don’t fully belong. That moment sparked a deeper reflection on cities that have shaped me.

Paris, as beautiful as it is, often exhausts me—especially in the colder months. It turns inward and so do I. My mind spirals, I get lost in thought, and my heart drifts somewhere between memories and longing. Strangely, what soothes me in those moments isn’t the city I’m in, but the memory of another: Rome.

Rome—so unapologetically sensual and alive—touched me in ways no person ever truly could. It seduced me not with its architecture or art, but with its atmosphere, its unapologetic passion. A plate of warm pasta, a sip of Pinot Grigio, and the memory of walking through cobbled streets in a skirt my grandmother would disapprove of—all of it made me feel alive in a way Paris rarely did.

But the heart of this poem is about more than nostalgia or cultural comparisons. It’s about being a foreigner—not just in a country, but in your own life, your own skin at times. As I pass Parisian cathedrals, I feel the pull of religious guilt from my upbringing, and yet I flirt with rebellion. I want to confess, but not to repent. I want to be seen as I am, not assimilated.

I reflect on old lovers—some of whom romanticized my foreignness as much as they desired me. A line in Italian, “tu mi fai impazzire Sofia” (“you drive me crazy, Sofia”), lingers in my memory—not just for its erotic undertone, but because it reminds me of how language itself becomes a vessel for longing. Then comes the French whisper I utter to myself:
“Je suis toujours un étranger ici” – I am always a stranger here.

That is the thesis of this piece. No matter how long I stay, how many French families try to welcome me in, or how fluent my language becomes—I remain “other.” Paris lets you live in it, but it rarely lets you belong to it. At night, when metro stations close and the city falls asleep, you remember your loneliness the most.

Yet, the poem shifts in the final verses. Despite everything, one person—the most important one, maintenant—made all of it bearable. Someone who was both French and Italian in the best ways: gentle with their words, wild with their desire. A perfect mixture of chaos and comfort, like the cities that shaped me. That person became my only sense of home.

So, “toujours un étranger” isn’t just about being foreign in a city. It’s about being in-between—between languages, between cultures, between past and present selves. It’s a poem about surviving the dissonance of identity and finding fleeting comfort in someone who understands you better than the places you come from.