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Fake Flowers: Saying Goodbye to Rome
Every beautiful thing has to end.
I’ve been here before, of course.
Except I was somebody else. Everywhere we go, we leave trace elements of ourselves, desquamated skin cells and the oils from our fingertips. I trace my hands along old walls as I pass, hoping to merge my little tributary with the tide of history. In 2001, I vowed to return. In 2014, I thought I’d never be back. Now, three years later, I’m here again, trying to look for the last time on the most beautiful city in the world.
But this doesn’t feel like goodbye. I was somebody else when I first came to Rome, and among streets crowded with ghosts, I catch only faint glimpses of the teenager I was then. The world was different then, too. No smartphones. No Google Maps. No soldiers holding assault rifles in the public squares. I bought beer with lira and wrestled with folding paper maps and felt like an entirely different person.
Dante was just a little older than I am now back in 1300. The middle years of his life coincided with what many at the time believed to be the middle year of the world’s existence. We can forgive him his shaky grasp of facts; it’s not often any of us get to draw a direct line between ourselves and history. When the first plane vanished into the smoking steel structure of the…
