In the centre of the narrowed street is a couple in an embrace, as if one had just reached the other.  

I have a single photo from my trip to Italy, nearly three years ago.  Unlike the others I took it has filtered through my camera, the old Toshiba, Facebook, to finally reach the desktop of my Macbook.  Most of the others have been lost in the hundreds of misplaced folders that make up my high school computer.  This one is my favourite.  

I remember when I took it.  Or at least I think I do.  We were in Assisi, on a spring day.  People concerned me less then, and most of my photos were of the curving buildings that made up the urban Italian streets.  I remember it amazed me, the combination of urban structure with rural feeling, a beauty that I didn’t quite understand.  In my old computer I have hundreds of pictures of Italian architecture, from Florence to Capri.  

I was walking when this photo was taken, probably in the front, talking to those behind me while I haphazardly pointed the camera.  I loved the enclosing way the buildings seemed to reach toward each other as the streets narrowed.  

It was months later, while I was going through my folders, that I noticed this photo.  At the end of the street, where sun shines in from a street parallel, a couple stands in an embrace, as though one had just reached the other.  I wonder who they are, why they’re so happy to see each other.  I wonder if they’re just glad to be there, like we were as we wandered through a strange town, laughing loudly through the narrow streets.    

If you could, find Josh Ritter