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Isla’s Point of View
The Taverna filled the way it always did — not all at once, but in a slow tide that seemed to follow the light. As the sun dropped behind the western ridge and the first lamps were lit, the room gathered its people in the same unhurried way it gathered warmth: families arriving in clusters, settling into seats that appeared to have been theirs since before the furniture was built.
I sat in what had become my corner — the bench near the window where the geraniums caught the last of the evening glow — with a glass of a local white wine and no particular reason to move.
Valentina was behind the counter, moving between the kitchen and the bar with the focused grace of a woman conducting an orchestra only she could hear. Nonna Rosa occupied her usual station in the far corner, crochet hook clicking in its steady rhythm, the blue blanket growing imperceptibly larger each evening.
I watched the room the way I watched everything here — cataloguing, filing, not yet concluding.