Tag: Italy

Surreal and Beautiful

~ Piece, of the Sky

Please-let-us-believe, miracle

The first stars poked out, like holes bored into the fabric of the sky. Jan and Alli sat, as they usually did, on the porch, facing Jan’s backyard. They were drinking mint juleps. Jan pulled a blanket around herself, shivering in the evening cold.

“Sometimes, I miss Nealy,” Alli began.

“Why?” Jan asked, turning around, “You have Ran. Isn’t she nice?”

“Yes, of course,” Alli nodded, “But in my heart, I miss Nealy, the original one.”

“Does an original love have to be the best one?” Jan asked.

“No, definitely not,” Alli answered, “But I can’t shake this feeling, this sense of time that sits within me.”

“You are hanging on to a memory, perhaps?”

“One might say so,” Alli inclined her head, “A frustration with a constant state of déjà vu.”

The moon was rising. The golden light fell on their faces, as the orb crested the trees of the wood. Alli had kayaked up the river to Jan’s house.

“Do you think that you can get that feeling back?” Jan said, looking into the twisted vines and bushes, beyond the world of her lawn.

“Or, I don’t know why this feeling hasn’t left yet,” Alli said.

“The era of your feeling is never coming back. You can’t get it back. You can’t go back. There’s nowhere to go back to. The nostalgia goes nowhere,” Jan said.

She continued, glancing at Alli, “When you left me, I realized one truth: people keep trying to preserve a world that no longer exists. Even if given the choice, would you really go back to that time? There’s only one way to look – forward – toward the future.”

Alli looked at Jan, still mixing the drink in her own hand, with the cocktail straw. The words did not come, so she looked back up at the moon.

Ganon Bowser

Music:

Puccini – Tosca, Act 3: E lucevan le stelle

The Age of Mauve

~ Piece, of the Sky

meta-vaporeon

Keo sat in front of a white table-cloth, in a café by the sea. The sun had just set; the sky was a ruddy violet. She was wearing an Oxford blue jacket, over a gray sweater vest.

The wind rushed out to the water, ruffling the red cloth awning. Keo set down her the china tea-cup and looked out to the last vestiges of the day.

She went to the discothèque – flashing lights, darkened room, the entire dance floor flooded with people. Keo sipped a cognac glass of brandy and watched the throng surge to and fro, the lines from the bar, the enthusiastic music lovers surrounding the DJ booth. Keo let the neon waves of light and sound wash over her.

While the party was still at its peak, she took a taxi home, silent cab winding through the cobblestone streets. She woke the next morning, under her white sheets, in a quaint second-floor apartment, with windows that let in the early morning heat.

Once dressed, and armed with a cup of coffee, she looked out onto the balcony, with cars passing below, and vendors hawking fruits and vegetables, from wicker baskets.

The next weekend, she leaned against the wall, watching lavender light sweep through the club. Another woman, in a buttoned-up shirt approached her, and asked in her ear, over the volume of the music, “You don’t dance?”

“I do dance,” Keo yelled back, over the Mediterranean EDM. They did a shy two-step to the remixed pop song and escaped back out into the cool night, to Keo’s favorite café.

“Do you come here often?” the other woman, with a short-cropped, brunette haircut said, gesturing to the coffeehouse and bistro.

“Yes,” Keo said, “The seafood during the day is quite good. Not far from here, you can also take a ferry out to the forested islands.”

“Sounds mysterious.”

“There’s a large park on one of them. Full of marble fountains and swans.”

“Must be magical,” the woman smiled, leaning over her coffee.

“It’s actually quite ordinary,” Keo said, stirring her own cup, “But that’s what makes it magical.”

They stopped to listen to the splash of the oars of a small boat, being rowed out, onto the black waves.

day time