First Impressions

Boxed cars zip through car lanes, weave and dodge in a dangerous race. Lush green hills and rows of gold tumble through the bus window. Something feels warm inside, like the wide faces of the red poppies dotting the ground--otherwise everything, all at once, seems foreign and familiar--car lot after car lot, like some great automobile machination, spewing rows of square cars, the ever-present bright blue graffiti traveling roadside on the medians. But different--a language I can't quite understand so that I grasp the big, bubbled letters of "Hot Boys" plastered over and over like something sacred, written across the concrete bridge and along glass panels marked with three black bird stickers. This will be home I realize. Home, which sounds like a sharp-tongued cashier, tapping my card on the countertop, grumbling about how I used a card for 90 cent acqua. Tastes like the rocky-taste of bubbles popping from my gassed water, how it settled warm and unappreciated on my tongue. Strange, unfamiliar, but then the smells, the feel of the cool, honest air rolling through the open window, coupled with the clang of Italian laughter and then the smoke from the pizza restaurant--about as American as a barbecue pit--if barbecue cooked in partially open courtyards and was prepared behind thick glass windows.