somewhere in the south of Italy

it was the summer of 1976 and the heatwave had fallen across our little island off the coast of Sicily. we had found some cliffs just a small drive from the town where the rocks were white and the water crisp. it had been 2 years and I finally felt alive again in the heat of the Italian summer.

we spent the days in the shade of beach umbrellas and bookshops where all I ever looked for was old copies of Hemingway. in the evenings we would drink Spritz until it tasted like water and swim drunk in the sea under the haze of the warm pink sky.

I remembered her skin pink in the summer, the way I kissed her on the street beneath her hotel and the way she smiled with her eyes closed and her hands around my waist. I remembered the cicadas in the morning by the window, the lemon gelato in the piazza and the way she never wanted to take her clothes off because they would lose the smell of me.

I remembered her soft touch, her still blue eyes and the way she made me realise that I had to let go of my past to live again. to understand why the most beautiful places made me feel the most alone, and to find peace in knowing that throughout everything, I was always me, until the very end.

I remembered the way she would hold me gently and ask me to stay, the way her blue eyes held mine for moments that felt like years and the way I would see her everywhere I go. the way her tattoo looked down her spine in a backless white dress, the way her sandals sounded in the square by the church and and the way we laughed when we couldn't cry anymore.

the black coffee in the morning, her fingertips on my back in the middle of the night and the kiss goodbye at the airport. the not knowing if or when I would ever see her and the way that I finally felt like me again, after all this time.

after the months of pain, the muffled screaming in the hotel room, the sleepless nights. after the days of silence and the moments of weakness that had begun to define a version of myself that I could on longer recognise. finally I had remembered everything that I'd spent years trying to forget.

a new chapter now with no more pages marked by pain. a time to cross out the words on the inside cover and begin to dream again in a new light. a time for life and love to make sense and for me to let go.

a time once more to ask is it better to speak or to die? and a time for you to be defined by who you are, not who anyone else wants you to be.