The taste of the sea stayed with Steno though he washed his mouth with wine and ate his meal of honey. The night would be long.
Stano’s garden
Stano’s garden had fed his family all his life. Now the walnut tree he sat below would give its first fruit. He closed his eyes.
In the cool grey land
In the cool grey land, the hot season rarely was, nor warm – a few days, a mayfly’s life in May, more a summary than a summer.
He knew the steps
He knew the steps but not the heart that caused them; she was wild, and spun and kicked. Thoughtful fire danced through them.
Realistic, real
I thought her tattoo was very realistic. But as people saw the tanned Jesus on her shoulder crying tears of blood, they began to cross themselves. Some knelt. Some hissed as she reached her towel and her friend wiped away the signs that she had scratched herself on the lava rocks as she climbed out of the water. His eyes were blue.
Changing the guard at the sea
At the Marina bar an hour after sunrise, early sunseekers with their cappuccini and cornetti swirl and eddy around the nightclub exiters, cold water, give me cold water. The two tribes mix like suntan cream and seawater.
An hour later the tattooed late-night swimmers trail up from the rocks, eyes red with salt and sleeplessness, beer bottles half full of cigarette butts and ash. The greatgrandparents distract the children with promises of coloured fish.
Flies and the number 58
Life changed the day the people of Pezza discovered that flies were scared of the number 58.
Life changed for the better for calligraphers, for potters and for tile firers. Every family wanted a 58 tile to hang below the crucifix above the bed. Some went further and had a tile, or at least a piece of paper with the number written black on it, in every room or above every door.
For a while life changed for the worse for Piero, who drove around the town in his Ape car, stopping in the shade and selling whisks and swatters, horses’ tails and, lately, plug-in insecticides. But he was only away for a week and then he was back, driving around in the hottest hours, offering tiles and earthenware numbers, the hooks and nails to hang them from and, the biggest novelty, a portable laminating machine for those who could not afford the pottery numbers but were embarrassed by the tattered sheets of paper that flapped above their doorways.
But life changed most, and for the best, for those who lived at number 58. Visitors from the north and from further began to buy up the lucky houses – Zia Maria became the talk of the village when she sold her family house at via Ferramosca 58 to a couple of Norwegian interior designers and moved in with her daughter and son-in-law.
In later years, who knows what happened, to the flies, to Piero and, perhaps most importantly, to Zia Maria, her daughter and her son-in-law. But for now, the people of Pezza were happy.
The Sunday kick about
Here! Here!
To me! Me!
Go on, chase it down!
Oh, at least undo your coat, man!
But it’s pouring!
To you! You!
I didn’t see it!
Well, you shouldn’t be smoking….
And the over-50s Sunday kickabout continues as it always does, until – GOOOAAALLL! He aeroplanes away, raincoat over head.
I dive from the rocks of my now
I dive from the rocks of my now into the sea of my memories. Those I am so desperate to hold twist silver as lightning away from my grasp. Lungs aching, fists empty, I float back to the surface, my tears mixed with the salt. Again from sharp rocks I look down and I see them, peacefully swirling and calm. Again from the rocks I dive into my memories. This time I am so sure.
First published on paragraphplanet.com 22 July 2015
Home from the sea
The flat flagged roof overlooked only by the burnt far hill, no eyes.
The midday sun burning bright at a midsummer angle,
rainbows splitting through the shower spray.
The hissing of salt-smeared skin.
simonsalento 