It wasn't the gnocchi that made me feel
Italy. It wasn't the stench of human shit,
overstuffed pigeons, or the way language
sticks in the back of my throat like honey.
Instead, it was the Italian woman’s satellite dish
and her punctured sheets on the clothes line.
It was the motion sickness up the mountain,
the moment before vomit curdles
and dehydration gives way to sleep.
It’s this same exhaustion I find anywhere,
both at home and in this villa’d mountain,
where America’s complacency seeps through,
almost following me.
Italy isn't beautiful anymore. Not even a little
godly. It’s the flies crawling on gravel
in a downward dog. They’re mine, these flies.
These red arachnids, flooding bathrooms,
and bowl pockets. So when the man next
to me at lunch complains his espresso too small,
I hate him.
Why do I feel like this belongs to me? I can’t own
a country, the people. I can't possess mountains.
I want to grab hold of them because no onelet me own myself when it mattered.
When my father called me on the phone
and told me my birth saved their marriage,
for a while. I never understood how to barely
scratch perfection with my fingernails, why
my heels never fully planted
the ground, or what constitutes as godly,
because on the phone, only the perfect have control.
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