The Stars Will Take Me

In a piazza across the world, I sat at a table near the Adriatic. I sipped a cappuccino and thought gentle thoughts. No one knew me. I could be who I wanted. I like the freedom of that. I relaxed and watched blue lights in the concrete shine up to the sky. I still see them, set three feet by three feet apart flush in rows of arcs around a statue. They threw their light up to meet the stars that threw starlight down in a glance.

My hotel was next to me and quiet. The water was soundless, silent. A young priest floated by in a cassock followed by a crowd of children and a dog sniffing out stray food. People were strolling and talking. Some were dining at the al fresco restaurant across the piazza. A mother and child played with a large blue ball, which irritated an old lady when it rolled to her feet under the table in the al fresco restaurant. The child, a boy, went scrambling after it. That’s probably what irritated her most.

Some people were leaving shops that were closing. I wondered about the families or friends that they might or might not be going to meet. They didn’t notice me or my journal, or where I sat sipping my cappuccino. I noticed them, though, and I could tell that they lived near. I felt as if I had fallen into a movie where everyone had a life.

There was music in the air too, but they all missed it. Even the waiter who brought my new cappuccino, who laughed with me in the warm joy of a clear summer night, even he didn’t hear it. It was the music playing from the radio in my dad’s car years ago. It was a song that my friend and I had sung so, so many times. I could see the state park where the car was sitting as clearly as the cranky, old lady in the al fresco restaurant across the piazza.

No matter where in the world I might go, when I need them to, the stars always will take me home.

—me strauss Letting me be