Mattina, Domenica, Siena (self)

Prompt: With a limited capacity to speak Italian, we see many people that we do not actually converse with. Without even meeting them, we still make presumptions about them in order to try to understand what they are doing in this foreign land. One might even say, we tell ourselves stories about these strangers. Tell me a story about one of your strangers.

A creature rustles on the wall...a shutter. The opener grimaces out at the day, one arm half raised, the other in full stretch at the rope above.
This morning, I realized, I reached Italy.
As I sit here on this wall, Italian sun washing my face in soft tangerine, I remember a walk through Cahors. Beyond the city barricades of Sienna, I sit now at a junction - a way home, a way away, a road to the road. I am glad to be writing here, in this book, and thank you pen but I would prefer a more natural version of your kin.
I have said twice now that I have been in Italy. And that was true. But each time, I lose it. And each time, it returns with more magic of itself unguarded. Here I am, and I am in no need of bean soup to see Tuscany properly. A church, a bus to a walk, friends. Eyes open, eyes closed, I am here.
The people that walk by - I can hear them in these morning streets, cobblestones ricocheting off the brick walls. One seemed a drunk, or rather an old woman, or rather - when my presumptions from her head movements gave way to full-bodied sight - She was elderly, and handicapped by Leash of Dog; her head and shoulders did indeed bob unpredictably.
The cars here, head not to market. They go far from here, or they go home. The people to work. The birds to sing. Not consumption, but life, the day. The cars run beside the city walls, they go through them. They shake and buzz. This is real.
The sun and I, we seem cradled by two peaks of the valley - dividiamo, resting encieme. We rest in Italy.
Another shutter opens, and three motorbikes move on, up the hill.