Remembering Italy

It is always harder when the day is this beautiful, I thought. The sun warmed the skin exposed on my arms, but also my spirit, the way it illuminated the colors of the crumbled stones walls. I inhaled slowly and deeply. I didn’t want to forget the sights, the smells, but most of all, the feelings.

I reminisced as I stepped into my taxi. This land, which I had grown so fond of, would soon become a distant memory. Like a love affair with the earth, the sky, and even the dirt, my heart ached in ways it hadn’t since my first break up. I didn’t want to leave, to go back to the life I once knew. I wanted to wake up to the sound of the pigeons outside of my window instead of buzzing alarms and beeping horns. There are good things at home, I thought, but far better things here. For my heart’s sake, I needed to stay.

Here, happiness came so easily. For the first time, I felt truly at peace with myself. It was okay to simply be. To inhale, exhale, and not always have a plan. It was okay to get lost. Failure, while inevitable, was not the end of the world.

“Boarding now,” announced the flight attendant. I sighed. I was going to miss the way the language rolled off my tongue so effortlessly. How even the most basic tasks became an adventure, and my heart race would race because I never knew what to expect. I had become the conqueror of all of my every doubt and fear, and who knows what I could do now? I was unstoppable.

I found my seat and crawled in.

Next to me, a child cried. I fumbled to find my headphones and stared intently of the window. The plane rose, and the city began to fade, smaller and smaller until it dissolved into the clouds.

And with that, I was gone.