The city streets of Florence, Italy feel like canyons. They are deep, cobbled trenches, dug out of a sea of red roofs. From the top of the cathedral, gazing out over the city, we had seen the shingled waves and ripples of dull red, a layer of rooftops. But deep, straight gouges in this landscape sprawl outwards from the cathedral plaza, a network of narrow streets. We stroll along the canyon floor, over the smooth cobblestones, each one like a scale on the back of a fish. The towering Italian architecture squeezes the sky into a thin stripe, three stories above us. The slim sliver of blue slowly fades to dark velvet, the color of a night sky polluted by city lights. Our destination slides into view on the side of the street: a gelato shop. The dull yellow glow from street lamps that shine a pale hue on the glossy cobblestones is replaced by bright white lights and blinding walls as we step into the shop. A crisp smell of cream and freezers meets my nostrils as I glance across the flav
Note: This past Wednesday, June 3rd, I graduated from the Island School, a semester school in the Bahamas. The Island School gifted me with countless meaningful experiences, friendships, and learning moments. In fact, I started this blog as part of a project for the Island School, where I have written a large collection of creative essays that I am posting periodically on this website. One of the vignettes is about a certain experience that I had in the Bahamas. As I transition out of my online learning journey, and into the summer, I thought I would share a vignette about my time at the Island School. So here is a piece about my first time breathing underwater: Broken Conch Shells The water, tormented by hissing gusts of wind, ripples angrily across the small swells. Through crusty patches of salt in my mask, I see the palm trees shaking their wild leafy mains like reproachful green stallions. We can see the dark patches of wind race across the surface of the water, so quickly that it