I’m laughing and cradling my knees while the moon rises over a sun that has not yet said goodbye. It is an impossibly charming outlook of the entire city of Zürich from this rooftop that somehow is just taller than its neighbors but I still find myself looking forward to the ample clouds that pass by to cover the roundness of the moonlight. Because in the dark, I stop caring about most things. I can feel my face relax, free to move into configurations that no one will see, unburdened by the weight of a smile that always lasts too long. My body reacts in ways unchecked with loose chuckles and shifts of surprise. No one can see me, or so I’d like to believe. What exists in the dark is only the floating voices and a heightened perception of how I feel, and in this moment I am happy. Happy to feel so comfortable sitting around cold pizza with new friends on top of a whole city and happy that silent pauses feel less heavy in the dark. I could close my eyes and hear the exclamations around me and pick out each unique laugh. The absence of light is a blessing for someone who sometimes overthinks, attuned to the minuscule shifts in another’s demeanor. It’s no wonder that some of my favorite conversations have happened at night: lying on the pier under the stars and spilling out our heartaches, jokes on a dark park bench, or conversations like this, where daylight faded and we decided to stay. I think it’s the same reason why I prefer phone calls to video chat: when everything else is stripped away except voice, we fill up the space in a raw, unfiltered way.
I left the office late today and instead of taking the tram directly home took a detour to walk by the river. The sun had already set and I was experiencing the winding down of a city. As the lights around shops began to shine brighter, I could feel my heart soften. In my three weeks here I had not felt a sense of connection to the city, wondering if it was simply an aesthetic mismatch, but here was a sense of possibility. As the buildings began to blur, I could believe it was another city I was walking through, one that I had been in or one that I had not. My presence pokes at the edge of my body and expands to encompass my surroundings. Night time is where I can fall in love with a town, because the borders are blurred and the space I occupy is limitless and the possibilities are endless and I feel impossibly present in all of it.
