WHAT THE HEART FEELS
1.
A woman rides the train
of longing one gray April morning,
ticket stamped Napoli, destination
unknown. Lazio landscape
stitched seamlessly to Campania,
Vesuvio coming into view, her anxious heart
tapping out a secret message with every
irregular beat, telling her that whatever she has come for
will find her, that her own story will unfold,
unflood against this backdrop where a lifetime ago
an eight-year-old americana lived in the volcano’s
shadow, learning the color of mourning.
Chi è morto? Who died? Her classmates saw
her black tights, not the shroud within where something
equally dark, unnameable, too sacred to be
uttered, lurked deep down inside,
a malaise incubating, a longing
lodged somewhere beneath her silent
sternum, slipping out shyly in the second-hand
language bequeathed her, the language of
love intertwined with so much else no
child should know, the language with
syllables that soothed her ears but rolled like
marbles in her mouth. Her italiano rubbed up against
the napuletano of Ciretta, Lina and Angioletto,
the cousins asking about l’America, its mythical
glow flashing in their eyes. And la cugina americana
who sang Fratelli d’Italia to celebrate their nation
in the piazza, had no words to describe
her country, no language to give shape to
her world, wondered where she really
belonged, knew only that she felt
bereft, a motherless child, an exile without
a country, a wanderer in search of home.
2.
Under the weight of this gray April sky, the woman
now begins her descent, alights
onto the platform at Napoli Centrale, hears
the city before she sees it, the memory of
its long-ago face buried somewhere deep within her.
The Kingdom of the Two Sicilies still bleeding
from her veins, she feels the pull
of this place drawing her back, making her
complicit in a spontaneous act of reverse
migration, an unplanned return, a running
towards whatever it is she has spent a lifetime
fleeing. The cacophony of Piazza Garibaldi wells
up and floods her senses, the cadence of
napuletano still moving her after all these
years of wandering in the wilderness
of words, searching for just the right
language, one that even the tender
places of the heart can fathom. Now
disguised as a woman of a certain age, una donna
di una certa età, the eight-year-old in her glimpses
home, takes refuge in unexpected
downpours that leave her inzuppata, drenched,
and alive. She masters the lifesaving art of
crossing the street, then risks life and limb
on the back of a vintage Vespa, abandons strident
strides for passeggiata pace, no destination needed. She worships
at the altar of what she has always held
sacred: the sacrament of breaking
bread together with no thought
of time; the palpable presence of ancestral
spirits in forest canopies and fern fronds;
the holy communion of conversations
unfurling in languages that break
the heart open. She cautiously
adds these to the secret coffers
of memory, and they sustain her as she loses
herself in the narrow alleys of La Sanità, finds
serendipity in a toothless trickster’s reminder to reset her watch,
swims in the shadow of Vesuvio’s indelible presence.
In every corner she finds hidden
fragments of her selves–the americana and the italiana,
the eight-year-old and the crone, the daughter, mother,
heartbroken lover, and the phoenix rising. She
gathers up the shards, turns them over one by
one, jealously guards them and creates
from them a painful beauty while she patiently
waits for a new design to emerge.
3.
In this city smiled upon by Saints Gennaro
and Maradona, where bittersweet coffee and the headiness
of basil hold court, where horns honk and humans
hawk good luck charms the color of congealed
blood and hail soccer wins ordained
by God, in this city laden with grittiness
and joy, where living in the shadow of
death means that every day is a party,
ogni giorno è festa, and the inevitable is held
at bay for one more day, here l’americana will finally learn
that what the heart feels, this indefinable and
inexpressible longing for what has been
lost, has a name—a’pucundria—
and, knowing that, she also knows this:
that translated or in lingua originale, she is
almost home.
Gina Sconza is a California-born Italian-American with roots in Sicily and Calabria, and family dispersed throughout the Italian south, Brazil, Canada, and the US. She has a passion for language and culture, expressed through her writing, teaching, and travel. Her writing focuses on cultural memory and addresses both the richness and complexities of her linguistic and cultural heritages. She now lives between the San Francisco Bay Area and southern Italy.
OVUNQUE SIAMO 