Sicily — On Observing

I like to sit on my balcony and look down at the world below. Up here, I am anonymous and can watch the tourists head back to their hotels, the passerbys take the menus from the waiters in the street, and the fishermen leave the marina. Up here, this life feels permanent.

I sit on a plastic chair and rest my feet on another, a flute of prosecco on the ground, a towel drying on the edge of my balcony. I am the one who takes the chairs inside when it rains and on the days it doesn’t, I must water the plants out here. I am careful to close the door to drown out the sounds of the music when I am trying to sleep and I am the one to open it again when the smoke from the oven fills my apartment. I wonder if anyone beneath me sees the glow of my computer just as I wonder if the child on the back of vespa ever gets scared he’s going to fall off, if the man in the funny hat drinks the same drink every time he gets apertivo, if the club across the street would find it weird if I went in alone just to see what all the noise is about. 

As I think about the streets beneath me, a kitten pokes its head through the window across the way. He peers out of the deconsecrated church that seems to have been abandoned for centuries and observes me, too. The top of the kitten’s tail pokes out of the window like a pom-pom before it disappears completely. I am alone once more, watching, waiting, wondering.