Under the cover of twilight shadows, we frolicked past the garden gates, where vines intertwined like our linked hands. Past the brick porches of stone homes stacked together like children’s building blocks.
Past Mrs. Herrington’s cottage, crammed between brownstones and clotheslines. Up the cobblestone hill and around the stucco corner and past the bakery with its tendrils of sugar chasing our noses.
“Where are we going?”
Your hat tumbling down and away, you squeezed my hand harder.
“You’ll see!”
Up the patterned cathedral steps and around to the alley overgrown with ivy and stray cats, down the narrow pathway between Mr. Barbora’s flat and the quaint bistro with pineapple umbrella drinks.
Through archways and gateways, past pink doors and yellow windows, under faded awnings and vibrant flags, over dwarf hedges and toadstools.
Past horn blasts and bicycle bells and dog barks and mamas calling their children inside.
Past music drifting from windows and whistles rising from kettles and squeals bursting from babies.
Around winding corners, through torchlit tunnels, under walkways spilling cascades of flowers. Past porches and patios and pergolas, and one building after the next, so close together their doors opened onto one another and waved hello.
When we reached a moss-covered footbridge, the river’s aroma upon the air, you announced, “Almost there.”
And, like the city’s bon voyage, the stone gave way to grass, and the grass rolled toward trees, and the trees opened up to blue, blue water with the orange stripe of the setting sun, and all we could hear were the gulls and the wind and the river and their sundown orchestra.
We sat arm in arm, catching our breath but losing it too, and there was nowhere else I would rather be – the city at our backs and the future floating freely out ahead.
Cheryl King is a dyslexia therapist and writer with two published historical fiction books.
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