SIENA 1993
Outside the city walls, i girasoli: bright faces turned toward the blue sky sway together in the summer breeze. I’m intoxicated on the fine golden pollen that settles on my hair, my fingers as I brush through the field. My copy of L’Inferno broken-spined, abandoned on the tiny desk before the casements that open out to the garden.
I sneak a boy into my room at the pensione, where my professor keeps a weather eye on all of us. “Walk with your eyes straight ahead. Like Beatrice,” she tells me. But I am 21. He is an equestrian with a worldly air, studied in Greek and Latin. He took my hand last night in the dark makeshift theatre, Zeffirelli’s San Francesco rebuilding the tiny stone chapel on screen. We kiss beside the courtyard gate, sign the lateness book at 12:01 a.m., slink to the second floor. He calls me Elena in bed. I don’t let him know I mind; close my eyes and fall among the sunflowers with you.
PARIS 1999
It is raining, so we go to the movies. We walk past Monceau Fleurs; the patisserie on the
corner; the new Smart car showroom– tiny cars like shiny toys. Our figures reflected in the
storefront glass: hand-in-hand, maybe for the last time; at least for a while.
You could stay here, you said. I have a job.
But I don’t.
You could write.
I have to finish school.
And why do you need a literature degree to write?
Shakespeare in Love, subtitled in French, on the screen. The love story is too familiar: the
father’s expectations and a suitable marriage. The daughter, of course, falls for the man who
loves but can never marry her– though she doesn’t know that at first.
But how does it end? A betrayed and anguished Wessex cries.
Dame Judy Dench’s Queen Elizabeth looks me square in the eyes: With tears. And a journey. For
duty must be [maintained].
The Millennial Clock on the Eiffel Tower counts down the days: J-150 til the year 2000. The new
decade, century, millennium. We meet in the middle of the street when the crosswalk sign
lights up. You hold both of my hands.
You will never age for me. [The lovers part.]
I am in the train to the airport. You are on the platform, in your cream alpaca cable knit
sweater. You blow kisses and wave as the train pulls away. Your lips form: Come back soon.
After a few minutes, the station is behind us; there is a point at which there is only forward.
I twirl the bracelet you’d bought me from the Senegalese craftsman at the marche aux puces.
Interlocking braids of silver and rose gold, a torque open at the clasp: the two metals entwined
but never meeting.
T Nicole Cirone is the author of Nine Nails: A Novel in Essays (Serving House Books, 2019). She serves as an editor at both The Night Heron Barks and Ran Off With the Star Bassoon. Her writing has been published in Pidgenholes, Ovunque Siamo, Serving House Journal, Philadelphia Stories, The Woman Inc., Hippocampus, Red River Review, the Philadelphia Stories “Best of” Anthology, Gateways: An Anthology, Reading Beyond the Saguaros: A Prosimetric Travelogue. A chapter of her novel is included in the anthology Women Write Now: Women and Trauma. She lives outside of Philadelphia.
OVUNQUE SIAMO 