It was the summer of the orange umbrellas, but I never liked them much. They're too bright for the subtle patina of coffee-stained afternoons in a quiet café in Sibiu. You know, I sometimes hear their rustle in the cold wind echoing off concrete walls—like whispered secrets from a life less ordinary.
Remember the vending machine that sold dreams? It was just a red box with a crank in Prague's twilight. I dropped a coin in, and out rolled a piece of paper, snug in its destiny: "Meet a friend you've never met before." Ironically, it led me to the best pancakes I ever tasted in an unknown alleyway.
There's a pebble I keep in my pocket—it holds echoes of a ship's horn from that foggy morning in Marseille. I tossed it into the water, but it never rippled far. In my mind, it swells, creating waves to distant shores where metaphors are lost in translation.
In a dusty box under grandma’s bed, there lay old tickets to a concert that never happened. But the memory dances still, a choreography of light and laughter beneath autumn leaves in a park where songs are written in the language of birds.