Writing journal

[assignment] Point of View! A character must go on some sort of journey of any scale. Must be told from a first-person POV from a character inside the vehicle going on the journey.

As I wait, the pier beneath my feet oscillates gently. The last part of the boarding platform floats directly onto the water, old tires fastened all around it to absorb the impact of the ferry.

There's a couple of handyman smoking against the railing, chatting idly in their syncopated dialect. There's a whole row of cleaning ladies sitting in the waiting room, ready to start their shift at one of the many hotels in the island. There's a fair share of old ladies – I'll never know what they have to do this early in the morning – and two of those weekly market sellers. Each carries a large wheeled cart designed to be pushed over the stairs of the island's pedestrian bridges. It looks like one of them will have to wait for the next ferry: the one that's approaching looks pretty full.

I finish my plastic-cup espresso and watch as the ferry slowly come nearer. The pier below me sinks and rises with the waves created as it turns on its side. Two men at the entrance grab some thick ropes and hoop them around the bollards with experienced ease, then slide the low gate open for us to board.

A floating metal box, nothing more, with its chipped white and green paint and its walnut sized-bolts. A crude, functional vessel that smells like gasoline and bleach and cheap coffee.

I watch as the side of the ferry cuts trough the water and creates endless identical waves, foaming shyly above the flat surface. A seagull comes to rest on one of the wooden structures that mark the limit of the navigable water. The low tide reveals the wood's been eaten up by water and small crustaceans.

The trips short and slow, each moment repeating itself over and over: a wave, a wooden pole, a seagull. A puff of smoke from an incosiderate passenger. A spray of water above the parapet. The thin, white layer of fog covering the lagoon. Everything feels suspended in time and space.

Then, she appears.

The morning sun peeks above the mist and colours stones and marbles in a pink hue. Two familiar columns cast their long shadows, darkening the white geometrical patterns inlaid on the grey pavement.

Venezia wakes up from her slumber with a choir of bells. A flock of pigeons flies over her roofs. I step onto the pier. I missed her.