Love in progress.

by Zach Rosenthal (United States of America)

A leap into the unknown Italy

She’s just left the coffee table. And not for the first time, not for the last. The circadian, you think. It’s always going to be like this. Remember the airports? How devastated each of her footsteps were, heavy with the thought of what is compelling her to go away again. College? “I want to transfer,” she’d coo. And, well you’d shiver a little, an undetectable shiver because you knew you wanted to leave her because somewhere inside, you thought that she wasn’t everything. You were too naive then, and hungover but at the same time still drunk from privilege and luck. Of course, the architect of days that have not happed yet will most surely never be able to commit to even the most pure and true convictions, he is far too busy. So, here you are in the practical birth place of romance itself. Firenze. At a coffee shop, the tables sit on the side of the road. There’s jazz music playing. The hissing of high pressure surging through those metal tubes, foaming the milks of lattes as their sound muffles and now rolls as if it’s a stampede. Bicycles ticking by, clocks, bell towers, buildings that have been here longer than your own country. Don’t be fooled. The Arno river is a jugular vein and this place is alive. Personified rocks, frozen in ways that make you ache…she was just sitting next to you, writing too. But she’s secretive to the bone. You tried to see what she was pressing into those pages, she was definitely pressing because a few weeks ago she gave you that Sheryl Strayed book, but ripped out the last few blank pages that she had journaled on, and you could feel the indentations still. She was probably writing about him. The guy she left you for. About how he’s thirty-four and knows how to prey on women with young broken hearts…she’s secretive to the bone. And you’ve abused the all-access pass. You could see a few words if you crane your head towards the street, as if just casually listening to the Italian couple standing next to the table, “Di La?” “Di qua?” Little words crept into your line of sight, “his hands,” “this place,” You shrug in discontent and ponder the miraculous effect she has over you. If you plead she’ll share a line of her writing. She’s observant and curious. In a contagious way. “The pen matters,” she says. Like the clothing of a tourist in a new place, you have to choose. Will you be a tourist or a traveler? Words that seem similar but aren’t; those matter too, keeping the space that the spelling tried to make. A traveler does not necessarily bring loud music from home, a tourist does that, a traveler brings the very best recording device and listens. Slips in unnoticed, absorbs the world and lays it out flat on the coffee table, takes a deep breath and dives deep. You’ll never find a girl like her again. And sadly you had to breakup just before coming to study abroad. Now you’re wallowing. Marinating. Your romantic ideologies have practically been chipped away and crafted and synthesized by cinematic art. The truth is, it’s not as connected as it seems. The wounded man weeping in the corner of some piazza, while the source of those wounds is smiling big will never never know it. She won’t see him hurt like that. Being the viewer, you get this sense that it’s all connected, that she’ll feel his tears and his head leaning down and maybe have a change of heart. Or maybe there is some connection, like cosmic dust floating in the air and each particle communicates, creating a bridge to absolutely everything. No, it’s not like that. She will never see this movie and so she has no idea hoe many times you’ve talked deeply about her and her beauty. Or how you’ve watched her sleep, or admiring from a distance. She can’t know. And you always thought there would be some sort of deliverance that transcended everything about natural law. That she would just look at you and not have to wonder.