Daylight Savings by Jacqueline Goyette

Nonfiction

Photo by Arno Smit on Unsplash

This is springtime. The first day and I am up in town, past medieval walls and old churches, up the ramp of steps to the piazza. Spring is in the small things today: the twitch of flowers peeping up from their boxes, yellow and purples, a brilliance of white chamomile in the grass outside, the restless chirp of a hundred pigeons crowded in the pockets of empty brick. I buy a pen and a lottery ticket at the tabacchi in town, pause in front of notebooks and magnets, faded postcards of the city, Macerata scrawled across them, ready to be postmarked. Dear loved ones, this exile of a city on the first day of spring, stranded below terracotta rooftops, in a city this isn't my own. Love letters and sad letters and I nod to the permanence of the things that I know best: the zig-zag of ancient stairs crowded with grass growing between the bricks. The old university building with all of its arches where I once studied Italian, learned the double z, the soft y sounds, the trill in an r. I walk by them. I walk by the museum with its doors open so spring can rush in. I walk by the green spray-paint artichoke down a small alleyway, past pubs where we toasted to new days, to the lives we wanted. There is a soft light here, a not-winter, an early March. There is daylight and in the distance, hills that twist out, take forks in the road, swift and sailing, modest mountains that will shed their snow soon. So will I. And I pass the cobbled roads to the church where I've taken a thousand prayers, left them on the doorstep, lit a thousand candles, whispered words in both of these languages, wondering who is listening. Today I carry one more -- like scrap paper, rustling in the new spring wind, held tight between my fingertips. Careful not to let it go.

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Author's Note:

I don’t know that I actively practice self-care, but l find it in glimmers here and there. Waking up early and stepping onto the balcony in my bare feet to watch the day begin. Witnessing my life in sunflower fields, in the stones of the old city, in afternoon rain showers and sunburnt summers on the beach. This country itself is self-care: I am in awe of the Italian cobblestones even now, twenty years in. I run down avenues of cypress trees on Saturdays. I light candles in churches for my mother, watch them glow. I try to always remember.

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Jacqueline Goyette is a writer from Indianapolis, Indiana. Her creative nonfiction has appeared in print and online journals and has been nominated for Best of the Net. Her work was recently selected for Best Small Fictions 2025. She lives in Macerata, Italy with her husband Antonello and her cat, Cardamom.

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