Burano

The calle stretches away before me, stone cobbled, and lined with a hundred candy-colored houses, painted so to press a vibrant hue on the eye of a drunken husband. They form a bright roadmap to clear fuzzed vision and guide stumbling boots toward their right home. Wives grew sick of the surprise of strange men, wreathed in alcoholic fumes, standing dumbstruck in the wrong hallway, so they forced those long ago patriarchs to paint each house a different color. Even a man in the thickest wine-haze would see clearly enough to tell blue from yellow and so be guided home. Or so the legend goes.

I am neither drunk, nor a husband. Would that I weren’t colorblind either. I stumble up to one house after another, but these walls all look the same to me. And the doors. The doorknobs meet my hand, but they do not turn to let me in. The lights are on behind every shining window, but none of them are my home. I don’t want to admit that I’m beginning to grow a little afraid. Is this even the right way?

It looks familiar, curving along the canal. Hanging baskets of flowers dangle from balconies. Curtains flutter from open windows. The cobbles are clean swept, and the paint looks fresh and new. In the failing light of evening, the lamps along the calle begin to glow. It all looks so welcoming, but every door is locked against me. The fear settles into a writhing little knot. Where am I if this is not my home? 

I pause, clench fists, take a breath. The canal is sighing off to my left, a gentle susurrus. I look to the water and find there the only signs of age to be seen. Algae lines mark the levels of the rising and falling tides. They are a dark glow on the white stone. Beneath them, the water is gliding along its pre-set path, carrying leaf litter and little boats out into the broader waters of the lagoon. My heartbeat slows to the rhythm of the slip and lap of little waves. As I wait and listen, voices begin to intermingle with the riversong.

Night is falling, and in the semi-darkness the elder women are emerging. Decked in lace shawls, they sit outside their doors, pulling close their baskets of hooks and delicate thread. They sit together in a swirl of skirts and laughter, and speak among themselves of things I cannot quite make out. When the stars begin to shine, they begin their work, and watch me with dark glittering eyes. Is it the starlight off the water that flashes there? Is it the lamps? Or is it something else entirely? I duck my head to avoid their sharp gazes.

I walk quickly, daring to approach no door that has one of the crones sitting before it. There are a few doorsteps that are empty, but they, too, remain firmly closed against me. Eyes are on me, but still I won’t meet them. A faint click of knitting needles is following me now. I cannot tell if the grandmothers are turning lace or fate in their gnarled hands, but they sit and work in the semi-darkness, muttering mermaid language, soft as seafoam and almost as familiar. The canals echo their whispers, and I can almost hear, nested within the sound of lapping water, the rumor of a different sort of home. I mustn't listen. Or must I?

I stop again to catch my breath. When did I start running? It seems brighter now. The waters are still speaking. I think they are talking to me, but I can’t understand their secrets. Perhaps, if I get closer, it will drown out the clattering of needles. Shivering and sweating, I take the steps to the edge of the canal and look down.

Starlight overhead sets the water below on fire. It burns bright as a half-remembered hearth. I step up to the very brink. The search for a doorway might lead to a waterway instead. My skin is burning, but I am so cold. The burning turns to an itch. I scratch at the scaly patches, and they flake under my scratching nails. What will the water feel like? Perhaps there, the scaly mail will come clean. Perhaps there, the scaly mail won’t come clean, because, there, it will finally make sense. I lift a foot and let it hover, a fish caught between firmaments. 

The water beneath me beckons. The whispers behind me urge. Still I waver.

It’s getting harder to breathe. Still I waver.

I imagine the stonework crumbling, sending me plunging down, down, down. It would be so easy to give in to such a fall, to just let the earth toss me into the waters. I imagine it, but I know that’s not how it works. The decision is mine. I must choose to plunge or choose to stay.

“I must choose,” I whisper, and so I do. I rock back once, twice. On the third, I let myself pitch forward. A leap of something-like-faith.

The water is accepting. The surface is dazzling and sharp and burns like fire, but it opens to me. The splash is like a small explosion. It envelopes my body and closes over my head with a loud rush and swirl. It stings my eyes, my nose. I feel it asking to be let in, pressing like palms against my ears and my mouth. I push it back and claw for the surface in a storm of bubbles. I open my mouth to scream, and the water rushes in. It pulls me down further. 

The depths are dark and cool. They soothe and quiet. I am sinking deeper, but that thought now comforts me. Colorblindness doesn’t matter in the dark. Wherever I was before, this is home now. The water let me in to itself, and it suddenly seems right that I let it in to me. Once more, I choose the water. At the very least, this way it’s a little easier to breathe.