For our birthdays, we exchanged socks like promises: I’ll protect you if you protect me . But we hated confinement, so often, we shed our socks and raced through hallways, puddles, rivers — more than common ground. We broke free of simplicity—spilled over walls like nail polish, screamed like firing guns, and ate our fill of rainclouds. For your birthday, I wear your socks, slip, fall, and think: I’ll get up for you if you get up for me.
Venice is paradise in summer: Lovers lay in gondolas under a lemon sun, sprawling on top of embroidered pillows and celestial dreams. Stress undresses itself on the boardwalk, leaving nothing but relaxed Venetians, who know better than to mask nature’s path. Domenica Rosa, you were there once, weren’t you? As a child, perhaps, exploring the damp stones with your violet eyes and young bones. And were you delighted? Or perhaps, like me, you kept your soul at home, safe and sound from wet ground and deep inside a catacomb carved by kitchen knives. Even so, Domenica, dear grandmother goddess of stars, stripes and pizzelles, listen to me. Hear my voice and embrace me again, for I must learn how to be as you once were: A mother weathered well for loving, a lover lost but never abandoned, a woman like Auntie Mame, with a tasteful tongue for storytelling, wrapped in nostalgia.
Stories hitch in sore necks, climb our throats, and yank wisdom from tired gums—clammy stomachs tumbling gems. Week one of six—knitting infinity with tongues. Between inflated cheeks and lost teeth, we choke ourselves with tears, spit on paper and knotted gauze. I’m not strong enough to hold the holy books we’ve written— sprinkled with fingernails— or swallow violet sediment. Ink glistens like pavement in the pupils of twelve parched eyes, begging— how will we survive?
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