Italia

There is always a pattern behind the weaving-
it is the greatest metaphor I know to describe
Humanity. We order ourselves to project a certain
picture, but beneath, in secret, we are a mass of
shapes and colors and rude knots.

I have come to lay ice before the Latin sun. I know
not how I came by it, nor did I know that it was slowly
killing me until I arrived here. I hold it in my hands as it melts,
an offering and a sacrifice. I am tired of being always so cold.
The rivulets of water feel something like blood, staining the
terracotta tiles a darker shade of ruddy brown.

I sit down at a table of glass and sink my teeth deep
into the flesh of the reddest and biggest strawberry I have ever seen.
It explodes across my tongue, dripping down my chin and tastes almost
sour with joy, like perhaps this is a dream I may, at any moment
be arisen from. It slides slowly down my throat, and I do not awaken.
I begin again.

I am clothed, and walking up hills no man in his right mind should climb,
but in this moment, clothed as I am, I feel naked before the sun, and somehow ripening.
I hear the laughter of children and the sound of foreign tongues and I have never been
so convinced that we sing to each other every hour of every day, as we speak.
I have never felt this beautiful.