that comes out improperly
to disturb the sleep of the righteous.
If loving is a defect
then I am imperfect,
Unworthy.
Tear pieces from my heart
and lay them on the cold tray
of respectability.
If to love is inappropriate,
when the path deviates,
lose me.
Nothing is more dangerous
than a burning spark
when dead branches
are stacked around it.
But if loving is inevitable,
appropriate
deserved
if it is breath,
light
magnificence of the soul,
pathway,
discovery,
youth,
ransom,
mutation,
motive,
I love for all this,
but above all because in me
the stele of courage
it is not yet lost.
I stopped, rested the pen on the table, vibrant with emotion and surprise from my own words.
It was the first time I had stopped thoughts with ink.
It was time to turn off the stove and start waiting for Filippo to come home.
My mind wandered freely in dreams, imagining that Pietro came in through that door, with his smile, with his fresh love.
The phone rings and abruptly brings me back with my feet on the ground.
"Hello?"
"Hello baby, can you talk?"
"Yes, but how did you get my home number? And why..."
"I took the number from your file, in the office... I just wanted to tell you that I love you and I want you so much."
My right hand clutched the handset of the phone feverishly, as the front door opened letting my husband in.
I immediately closed the call, leaving the phone on the kitchen bench and with my back to my husband I started to move pots and ladles.
My hands were shaking.
He was talking via radio with a colleague, not yet tired of twelve hours of service.
"Is dinner ready?"
8.
Bitter morsels, sweet crumbs
Perhaps all women find that they have to accept situations that rationally seem impossible to bear, unsustainable.
I did all I coud to try to understand Philip, I justified his attitudes, always so aloof, his manner which had become more and more brusque lately, but all this hurt me so much that often in the recurring moments of solitude I burst into floods of tears that could find no consolation.
Even when the tears stopped falling and the sobs calmed, I did not feel a little more relaxed.
I was just tired.
Tired inside.
And as I felt myself founder, the only thought
that gave me a reason to exist was Pietro.
***
It was a cold winter, it had been raining incessantly for too many days to remember how many.
I was sorting invoices into the files, hidden by a shelf full of papers.
I hadn't heard Pietro approaching.
"I’ve found a place."
His warm breath on my neck left bare by my hair gathered on the nape of the neck confused me.
"Go down the stairs to the ground floor, then continue for two more ramps, where there are all those boxes. See you down there."
That said, he disappeared just as he had appeared, leaving me in the throes of a cyclone of emotions.
My arms felt heavy, and my legs did not support
me, my heart was thumping so fiercely that it seemed to me that everyone in the studio could hear it.
What was I to do?
Think.
Reflect.
I didn't give a damn about reflecting at that moment.
Think, make your head work.
What should I do?
Do I go down?
No, I don't go down.
What if I don't go down and he gets upset and doesn't talk to me again?
I can't risk being left without what only he can give me.
I’m going down.
No.
I don't know.
So I found myself going down the steps of that
place which was so squallid, where the entire condominium piled up things of no use.
It was dark.
What if Pietro hadn’t come down?
What if he had played a bad joke on me?
