Partials

Don't you want to just crash on the couch? my sister asked as I gathered my things. But I didn't. I longed for that walk home, home to my borrowed nook in the narrow alleys on another island. When the city is finally quiet, the Japanese tourist gone home, the self-conscious eyes of the homogenous people asleep. I walked across the bridge and the City shone; at the day's darkest hour, the sky was still deep blue. A full moon hung low over the south island, its right side nibbled on by an eclipse. I walked the whole way home sensing something was missing. Interpreting symbolism seemed superfluous.

I turned the corner down the narrow street of my home; how quiet it was. I allowed my steps to slow, I took in the night. Imagined hundreds of years of people walking these same streets, how this church had been a beacon at the top of the hill for centuries, how much life ran through the veins that are these streets and how insignificant my place in them. And yet here I was, a part of them nonetheless. The eclipse passed. The magic remained.

You say all the right things. I'm listening, but I don't know if you can hear it.