Under this darkening robe of sky, the city trembles, sugared with dust. A scurf of pale-pink roof-tiles slithers in the haze on cantilevered shadows and pizzicato shutters, and the bell-towers peer like insects. Nothing is immutable, all is in constant flux – an exhalation of form and colour and noise. But here above the obscure, knife-cut streets coursing with black blood and startled cars, there is silence.  Silence in the breath of wind, the silence of a flexing hair, of sunlight on the back of my neck and the cool space plummeting down to the square. A pigeon rifles the air below my parapet, patting down the glare with its monastic wings, shifting its blessing onto the tourists at the tower’s foot. A blue flash passing, I catch in its beady eye the sun in minature, lux in tenebris, pin-spark on a dried moth. It careels, stiff-winged, whirling down to the cobbles, collapsing into a grey speck pecking at crumbs.

I cannot hear you but my feet feel your footsteps. I could not see you as you strode away, you were lost in shadow, but I knew you were there. As you trod each step down to the cavernous hall the white hem of your cotton trousers swept up a little dust as a keepsake, though you did not notice. I thought I heard the green baize door fold shut. 

Now in the long street that leads back to that small room on the second floor, the tall shades lean like sleepers waiting for the ferryman, numero domine. There are those that walk this way with resolution and those that acquiesce, but yours is the only figure I see, stepping out into the light, keeping time with the gunmetal bollards on the pavement. Eighteen, nineteen, twenty…

And then you crossed over.