Letters From A Wanderer Jasmine Crystal Mah

“Luggage-less, I walked up to the sliding doors and blinked as I felt the sudden whoosh of air against my face. When I opened them again, I was standing in front of this familiar stranger. A face and a smile that I knew from a different world, when our surroundings were my comfort zone and the language was my own.”

“ They say Rome is meant to be lived on rooftops. I think it’s meant to be lived in the in-between, the dash, the dot, dot, dot… like those moments right before you see each other across the lit piazza when the tension and anticipation is so high that all you can hear is the sound of your own heartbeat and the voices of all your friends back home asking how could you possibly fall for him. Italian, from Rome, and far too gorgeous for monogamy, isn’t that how they are?”

“...and he looks like a dream”.


You can find Meg on Instagram as @mzacheja.

“It was spring when we met. The panna cotta colored magnolias were in full bloom in Milan and their sweet perfume seemed to come in waves, in little puffs of perfection. He paused and looked up at them for a moment, almost pink against the bright, bluebird sky, but then instantly regretted stopping. She used to love this time of year. Primavera. If she had been here now, holding his arm on the way to nowhere, she would have undoubtedly commented on the magnolias.”


You can find James on Instagram as @jamesottoallen.

“I have this guilty pleasure whenever I travel and it's to first guess where people are from and then why they are going where they're going, all before we've exchanged any actual words. For whatever reason, I pegged this one as an Italian going home. There's just ways I can tell now, I can't explain how. It's not even that this boy looked classically Italian- he had sandy blond hair, a slight build, wide eyes, and was dressed more like an American with a sweatshirt, shorts, and black Nikes on his feet- he could have been anything but Italian if my deductions were made on looks alone.”

You can find Julianne on Instagram as @giuliafarr.

This is the last chapter of my debut book, Wander(lust) and essentially the “title track”.

“Like the pull of gravity, like the tides, there is no other alternative and no other direction to move in except into each other. Perhaps this is what they mean by wanderlust. That it was never about places in the first place, it was always about people.”


You can find Amy on Instagram as @amyychristinee