Cruising the exposed-brick walls of Boston, a starry night sitting above in the sky, Jazz flows through the drivers car and fills the distance between you and me. The lights outside dim and die and brighten again. Alive. There’s life out there, in the city.

There’s a sense of adventure floating in the air. A sense of opportunity. And we are witnesses—silent ones at that, since mirrors of technology try to catch our glimpses, and the music surrounds our other senses—that words, voice, would damage that moment. That it would—somehow—make it real, and in this night, this particular night, the surrealism of the Boston scene is enough. It really feels like it.

A right turn brings us to one square and a left to another, the city caught on that idle moment, too late to go to sleep and yet too early to wake up. That fleeting time when moonlight touches all and yet the yellow in every streetlamp caresses the empty spots with its gliding touch.

And the people go on. Walking. Stirring. Smiling. We see couples gently touching their hands. We see newcomers striding through the streets, trying to get a familiar sense of where they came—a feeling I know since I’m one of them too.

I see a series of buildings in the night and for a second I’m in other place, back at my origins. And the silhouettes match up with the ones I remember from my country, and as the drive goes on, memory takes control of my expectations.

Trees and people and billboards somehow are merging in the mind and things seems to coincide. Till they don’t, and the restaurant I remembered and my memory had promised would appear next doesn’t, and a bridge takes its place. And it’s fine, since I’m back on the seat, another hand over mine and the moving night of Boston outside the window, stating “Welcome back, we’re still here and here we’ll remain”.

Our souls arrive home, somehow bigger and grander, having just had dinner. Inner souls filled of memories. Of shadows and lights that now are off. Of people going to parties, and drinks, and cigarettes. And ideas of what is next. Fears of change. So much change to come.

We get up on the street, leaving the car, facing the house where we’ll sleep and leave our bags for one of the last times till they have to fly away, and we breathe for one second more the air, the mixture of oxygen with life. And we cross the street, not quite the same people that left this place a mere hours away, nor the ones that will go on before sleeping, and will order a pizza and watch tv.

For that moment, for that speckle of time in the history of our lives, we are we, trapped in the middle between before and after.

And on that night, that singular night, that’s all we can really ask for.