To Gaze

One

These are streets filled with life, with a baby crying, with unexpected laughter, with a smile that doesn't belongs there and a smile that does.  There are wrinkles on young faces that fit, there are eyes that drop to the sidewalk as if they shouldn't look at each other, and there are hand that are held confidently, gracefully, with ease. An echo off the cobblestone roads only brings me closer towards the truth of it all, the understanding that all of these people understand. There is a realization that the energy held between the fingertips of each stranger is more than should have been expected. There is more there than what we thought, we understand that life is more than just a pump of a heart beneath skin or a mind that somehow creates these thoughts in the first place. There is an understanding of life as in people, seen in what they do and what they can do. They have all touched, have all felt.

We walk past each other yet we don't speak, I saw your eyes and you saw mine, but now we continue as if we didn't. For a moment we connected, but I don't remember the colour of your eyes and you won't remember mine. To think, we each at one point spoke to a stranger just as I am a stranger to you. Each of you has once stood and stared as I stand and stare now, and you all thought in some moment as I think 'we are alive and we are here'.

Imagine if we were all to speak as people do before they become something more than just strangers. Perhaps if we spoke to one another about ourselves we would soon find that humanities connection becomes stronger, that the world becomes less dull. Constant sharing, learning, growing. As a world we will explore all there is to explore if only we stop and take a moment right now to exchange a few words. If only you walk up to me or I walk up to you and one of us greats first.

Do we need something to push us together or can we just do it, four in the afternoon as people have settled into the day around them and cars rush down the streets can I walk up to you, stranger, and introduce myself in the simplest of terms.

I am Isaac Sorenson, and this was five years ago.

Four women pass by, and they all look as though they dress the same. Only, one is much older and the other three appear to be young adults. There were tourists. One mentioned the ice cream.

"The ice cream in Italy is better than here."

"Of course is was, it's Italy."

We all got on the same bus, one that was small and white with cushion seats. It was only a dollar to take the white bus, and the man who drove it smiled as each person got on. I sat across from the four women, and the girl from Italy didn't have the same accent as the others.

"Jenna, your English is really good now." Then the girl turned to the older women, "Mom, don't you think Jenna's English is getting really good?"

Jenna, the girl from Italy, just smiled and said thank you. She was carrying a Harvard backpack. She was the only one.

The small bus rocked as we went over uneven cobblestone down narrow pathways between old well-kept buildings. The streets were filled with flowers, people, and white or grey buildings. The noticeable colour was red, a lot of red flowers. Occasionally yellow, and least often blue. The girl who goes to Harvard, Jenna, was looking at them too. She seemed to stare in wonder, watching each person that passed us as we itched along the road way.

I wondered what my sister was doing right now.

In the heart of the island I wonder of her, and I picture her asleep in her bed. She wakes up later in the day, as most wish they could, and she stays up late into the nights. When she wakes up she's not tired like I am.