Office of Programs for Study Abroad: Study Abroad Newsletter

Leaving Florence

Author: Erin Wellman
Posted: 18-Jun-08

Leaving Florence

Five a.m. is the same

whether you speak Italian, or not.

Waiting for a taxi,

I wish I could

relive

my last weekend,

the rented boat in Capri.

That dinky boat!

Waves from cruise ships were ramps

we were a skateboard on a freeway

but the taxi driver won’t hear,

not from me.

At five a.m. my orange luggage

looks more like a pygmy hippo.

And the empty street could be,

for all practical purposes, a runway.

And the spot lights along it reveal nothing

but a row of nestled motorbikes.

Five a.m. is a ghost town.

It is Pompeii, the sky is ash

and pin-points of white.

I sit in silence after chaos,

a silence absent of color and the fading cathedral,

of syncopated song in the piazza,

and of expensive women with

leather shoes,

They’re wrapped in hardened rock

and packed away.

There is nothing sadder

than a botched goodbye,

and I am alone, a survivor after Pompeii

on a curb before sunrise.

Don’t rush! Golden colossus,

tell the driver

I can wait.

Erin Wellman studies Mathematics Education and took part in the Purdue in Florence program.

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