Jazz, Time, People

The smell of coffee, smokey and ecstatic.

A saxophone softly wailing out of a stranger's window.

I walk down the dusky street as the sky cries onto my shoulders.

I look up expecting to see the big melancholic eyes the tears escapade from through all the heavy jostling clouds above,

but all I see is my own reflection.

All the people are ghosts and I feel like I’m the first and only human alive.

Maybe the last and just unjustly lost.

But then my glance escapes from me inside the cafes along the street

and sees the old masters of their work and the little youngsters, just learning the art, debating, degustating, dreaming.

Perhaps I’m not as alone as I’ve once been.

I’m soaked. I’m sinking.

My bones screech and my boots squeak as I place one foot after the other on the red bricks of the city that captured my heart.

It’s not squishing it fiercely, like a child holds on to his mother's skirt.

But rather I’m the child, listening to the precious stories of the old city, an old story itself, awed and enamoured.

I’m captivated but not like an animal in a cage, but like a tiny speck of time admiring the grandeur of the past, the present and the future.

/milana - back from nov 2022