Venice, early days of June
There are places you visit, and others you haunt.
Venice, I fear, has reversed the roles.
I wandered in wearing silence, left with something less intact.
The city is a costume no one dares remove. Even the sky feels baroque, draped in pearl-grey thoughts, every hour a different shade of rehearsal. Theatrical.
Yes, she is beautiful.
But not kindly.
She keeps too many mirrors.
I thought of Marchesa Casati often, how she once walked these stones in peacocks and sleep-laced jewels, shoulders draped in dusk and leopards, gliding through shadows like myth turned flesh, determined to make her life a work of art.
She wanted her life to outlive her. Perhaps it has.
Now the pigeons circle where her gaze once landed.
The ghosts applaud her, still. They remember.
There are too many bodies here now.
Not ghosts, but sugar-drenched pilgrims.
Flesh humming with gelato and phone screens, feeding on sweetness with no hunger left for shadow.
I stepped into a palazzo and someone asked where the café was.
I pointed toward the silence. They smiled but didn’t follow.
In Fortuny, the fabric no longer dresses bodies; time has turned fabric into atmosphere.
The walls breathed. I swear it.
A stranger mistook me for part of the exhibition. I didn’t correct her.
At La Fenice, the chandeliers blinked like weary stars.
I stood behind the curtain for a long time, long enough to forget whether I was waiting or hiding, saw the audience shimmer in their disbelief.
Some clapped too early. Others not at all.
But above them, her, Venice, watching through the gold-leaf cracks.
She prefers mistakes.
There was a garden. Not metaphorical, though it may as well have been.
In Valsanzibio, I wandered the old geometry.
Paths curved inward like questions.
Statues held their poses as if remembering something I hadn't lived.
The hotel felt noble in its decay.
I liked how the walls wept in slow, chalky sighs.
My room smelled of citrus and something vaguely unfinished, maybe a regret.
There was a note under the pillow in someone else's handwriting.
It read: „ Don’t forget who you almost were.“
I ate too many pastries.
Not out of pleasure, but curiosity.
How much sweetness until the ruin sets in?
And yet, Venice forgives.
But not loudly. Not with words.
She does it through reflections, glimpsed in puddles, lacquered doors, the iris of someone you nearly knew.
Forgiveness here is an aesthetic, not a virtue.
I came wanting clarity. I leave scented with confusion.
Some cities teach you how to forget the question.
If I were to return, I’d bring fewer clothes, fewer hopes, and perhaps a secret or two.
Venice loves secrets. Adores it. Especially the ones you think you’ve already buried.
Yours,
perhaps still,
t.
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