Early Sunday

Early Sunday morning on the Corso. (with thanks to Rabindranath Tagore)

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The streetlights are still on, and a fresh morning breeze keeps me company as I walk along the Corso. Not a soul in sight, yet I’m not alone.

Light laughter echoes up the street, turns into the lane with its wooden horses. A black ballerina is tossed aside as bare feet dance over the cobblestones. I walk faster to catch up, but when I’m there, the street is empty, except for that faint echo of rustling skirts.

Back on the Corso, a beer bottle clatters down from the step by the shop window.  I’m empty, empty, empty it keeps repeating as it rolls over and over and the kid who tossed it aside, unthinking, disappears into the shadows.

A blue face mask with its white tentacles lies forlorn in the midst of the street. It slipped silently off the girl’s arm, as she nonchalantly continued on her way, calling out to her companion “at this time of night who needs a mask?”  Be careful I call after her, but she has vanished around the corner.

A cork rolls down the street, the faint pop of when someone managed to pry it off its bottle bouncing off the glass window pane of the shop next door, with its beckoning display of brightly patterned orange blouses.

Over by the newsstand a green and orange piece of paper, a map of the city, silently flutters in the passing breeze. Echoes die down as the truck with its rotating green brooms rumbles into sight, sweeping the paper and the cork into its innards.

Only the black ballerinas, which the street cleaner in his orange coverall has thoughtfully put on the wooden bench together with its companion, discovered half  hidden underneath, continue to wait mutely for their owner.