Aubade on Piazza del Popolo with Saxophonist and Chopin
Ashna Ali
I think about him still. The lone boy standing at an edge of the obelisk at the crack of dawn playing a tune I’d never heard, warm brass with cinnamon tendrils, then sudden sweetness—a furtive gecko painting its tail across the unfolding. You are right to ask what a seventeen-year-old girl was doing there. I was a runaway. It’s no tragedy. I had meant for an epic rebellion, but was gently held, my days thrilled from end to end. A bygone era. I couldn’t tell you what I was doing. I only know that I stood three metres from this boy, his skin a hue even deeper than mine in that city hell-bent on drowning us under its weight. Grey and blue and purple wafting behind him more ancient than any ruin, even as they slide into light. He grew me into something else, this boy. Something no longer a child. Stale smoke on the morning air, a tang of espresso beans. Head upturned, eyes closed, casual as the first raindrop, he slid a nocturne in C sharp minor between loneliness and solitude like tucking a hand under a shoulder blade. Perhaps this, my skin engulfed in morning dew and music, is the true human romance. Immune to purpose. Just a hinge between day and night, the right to be a body in its body.
