Author Archives: Jessica Lynne Henkle

Eight p.m. on a Monday, sitting with mi tocaya, in the apartment she now shares with her new husband: we eat yogurt and try to figure out why we’re still friends.

Inside the waiting is a pulse that beats steady, strong, consistent. And this, at first, is comforting.

You’ll fall in love with Portland, I keep hoping, or at least the Northwest—let the branchy arms of pine trees wrap around you, the gray roar of the Pacific pull you to its shores.

On top of the Marjan in Southwest Croatia—10,000 steps above the city of Split—I realize, when it came to you, I wouldn’t have done anything differently.

Easter Sunday in Zadar is running in the rain—sound of water on water as it hits the Adriatic. Sound of church bell after church bell clanging at odd intervals for minutes at a time.

A ferry was supposed to take us across the sea between Italy and Croatia, but as is often the case when traveling, it doesn’t start running until three days after we need it.

What I love most about a space or a place is the way it fills with light, and the sunsets in Venice are so unreal, we don’t even try to capture them on film.

The Duomo in Florence sneak attacks you like a spring storm. You’re walking down the cobblestone, turn a corner, and bam—you get blindsided by white and green and red, a cathedral so expansive it takes four separate shots to capture it on film.

The train to Pompeii takes us through Naples, where the men stare at me without blinking, and I wish I’d put my long blonde hair up in a bun before leaving the hotel.

I recently went to Italy and Croatia with my brother. Between the two of us, we took 1,500 photographs. I did a lot of scribbling in a bubblegum pink Mead notebook—some about our travels, mostly about whatever rubbish was rolling around in my head.