Venice

We arrived in Venice by water, which felt right. The train pulled in, we stepped outside, and suddenly there was no road. Just the Grand Canal, rolling past like it had somewhere better to be. A boat showed up. We got on. No one explained anything. That was the beginning. Venice doesn’t make sense. It just is. Buildings rise straight out of water. Alleys narrow into nothing. Maps lie. We got lost immediately and decided not to fight it. The streets smelled like salt and stone and something sweet baking nearby. We followed that smell for a while, passed a man singing softly to himself in a gondola, and ended up in a campo where laundry hung above us like flags. No one else seemed in a hurry, so we weren’t either. A bell rang from somewhere we couldn’t see. It echoed off the walls and kept ringing long after it stopped. We wandered into a church with a floor like a wave and light slanting through dusty windows. No signs. No crowd. Just silence and gold and the feeling that this place had been holding its breath for centuries. The canals shimmered all afternoon green, then gray, then glassy black. Gondolas moved like they were dancing. Vaporettos packed with locals drifted past tourists taking photos of everything, and pigeons owned St. Mark’s Square like it was their empire. Maybe it is.