Getting Late

It’s getting kind of late, isn’t it? I mean, kind of late at night. It’s already morning, 40 minutes past it, in fact, and I’m walking up this cobblestone street wondering how many more times I’m going to do this. If it wasn’t so late, if I wasn’t so preoccupied I might figure out that I have so many days left in this neighborhood, in this city, in this country and at twice a day, minus the days I don’t make it home, that means so many walks up and down this street. It’s getting kind of late. I mean, late in this trip and I still haven’t done so many things I should do, wanted to do. I got here in August and it’s December now and if I close my eyes, if I even blink, it’ll be January and I’ll have already been home for a month and I’ll blink again and it will be next year and I’ll have forgotten exactly the way these cobblestones feel under my worn-out shoes, the length of the walk, the side of the street I walk down versus the side of the street I walk home, and how each feels different and it might as well be a different street, I experience it so differently. I’ll forget what it feels like to be in a crowded space, surrounded by people, but completely isolated because I can’t understand a single periphery conversation. I’ll forget the order of the metro stops and the tune it plays when the doors open and close. And I’ll always intend on coming back, now that I’ve come to know this city and made friends with it, but what if I never make it back?