Amalfi shimmers
like the past tense, like a rumour no one is quite willing to debunk.
What they're chasing after is both real and a mirage. Rainbows know what I mean and laugh, and you laugh with them knowing they're not forever and neither are you.
Sunscreen and sweat curdle at the edges of their tiredness. Halfway up the sequence of staircases, somewhere below the apartment, they stop to breathe, to rest, to take photographs just like the ones that lured them here to begin with. It was a feeling they wanted. No, a memory. No, the feeling they felt when they saw on a screen a photo of a church, and mountains, and sea, and clouds and, for the first time, mouthed the word: "Amalfi".
It was a dance that brought them (and you) here: the bus from Salerno spiralling between hamlets, defying the cliffs, the Vespas, the brave or stupid cats. Another cat, wiser or less brave, lazes on your terrace unphotographed yet amply fed. Food isn't on its mind now. It dreams of memories and feeling too, just the outlines of them, a lemon-shaped silhouette.
