I’ll never have enough words for Rome, for Roma. It’s the same as any hometown; I could feel my way around Water Row in the dark–through the windy, flat pavement that so often floods during rain season, swelling up like your ankle after track practice, always held just across Lincoln Road and the blueprints of the old school, past the land where they built a replica of Thoreau’s cabin only to dismantle the surrounding hallways, leaving it an awkward centerpiece of a parking lot.
I could navigate the streets surrounding Via del Corso in a similar fashion, weaving my way through tourists and vendors. The smells that say it all. Turn right for a panini with prosciutto. Turn left for pasta with melanzane and formaggio. Straight ahead, the mist of the Trevi’s spout is humidifying, flooding your pores, as if to remind you of that rising water. As if to say, “You can return.” Go back to those streets where the only pertinent sense is sound: your sneakers on the asphalt, running far while knowing you’ll someday return.
[Occasionally I like to post 100 word free writes on places I've been that are sparked by a photograph]
