A contemplative piece, part true, part fantasy, from the place where dreams slumber? Day 21 of a flash a day in the month of November. Inspiring prompts generously offered by Nancy Stohlman.

We Are Longing

The city street is deserted, trolleys on the next block down stopped, their electric hum silent in this liminal moment just before sunrise. A cat strolls liquid over cobblestones and around the edges of the shop doors, slipping away after having surveyed the trash cans and finding nothing to its liking. We sit on our black railed balcony on the third floor and drink in the desires of those who have not yet shaken the dreams from their blankets.

We are early risers and we are longing.

We sublet this apartment, having jettisoned our regular life and the irregularities that have been plaguing our nation for the last several decades, which flamed to cruel contagion in the past year. Should we have left earlier? We cannot say.

We are late to escape and we are longing.

This isn’t forever, we tell ourselves. Parents passed, children grown and childless, we’ve been able to independently put aside a small self-pension and are blessed with good health. These streets and shops, with fine art from locals, traditional recipes, fine pastries, and fruits and vegetables still warm with the fragrance of full sun. A small lending library with books both old and new, and we’re grateful to have been brought up speaking and reading many languages. The people, though reserved, are friendly enough, and you play fiddle while I fiddle and play with poetry. Neither of us is particularly good, but we enjoy the peace of place.

So in the sunrise, we stretch our bare toes over the cool wooden boards of our balcony, ears cocked for the rattle and aroma of coffee brewing in the shop down the street. We delight in the clatter of doors opening and the whisk of a broom on marble door stoops that have witnessed more history than the two of us combined will ever know. A breeze kicks up, the wind shifts, and the scent of freshly harvested fish drifts up from the sea at the bottom of the hill. We are borrowing this town and we know we can’t stay forever. Can we?

We’ll have to return home at some point, but now we are longing for coffee and a fresh roll.

© Liz Husebye Hartmann (2025)