italy pt. i verona

"I met myself for the first time half a world away from the only place I’d ever thought to call home. all it took was a plane ride and a handful of like-minded people to find a new way to see the world. we finally cut all ties with time zones that had only ever stolen from us and, untethered at long last, we flew away. we free floated above the rain, meandering towards our ancient escape and cheered as spring met us halfway there. ‘once in a lifetime’ we whispered as we touched down on cobblestone streets and the ghosts of old rose to meet us. they wrapped us in sunlight and sent us reeling. we ran aground on foreign shores and forgot our fear of the unknown. every narrow alleyway, every canal and gilded doorway opened for us to tiptoe through and we did, holding our breath to preserve the past that still hung heavy in the air. we rubbed our young eyes as they tried to take in a thousand years all at once, tried fitting all that time into our camera lenses so we could take pieces of history with us but it never quite fit, so we collected the runoff and rebuilt it late at night, in dog-eared journals that were bought to hold new worlds. I want to live like that forever, untethered and always changing. I want to watch the sun always setting over a different city than it rose. I never want to lose that magic of touching something for the first time. I want to spend the rest of my life capturing world-wide moments and pinning them to film and paper."

                                   -I went to italy when I was seventeen and nothing has been the same since. I didn't really know how to take photos when I went, but still, they mean the world to me. 

the next city we visited was venice, a life-long dream of mine. that post is going to be a whole lot longer, I can't bring myself to delete any of them.