(2) Memory (Week Two)

When I thought of Italy as a teen it was nothing but sexy. There were movies and stacks of cheap romance on the top shelf of my mom's closet. A topless man and his hair wrapped around a woman--she looked exactly like no one I'd seen in my world. The half dip of mouth, the -- of her eyes worried me. If this is beautiful, I thought, the scabs on my knees, the flatness of chest and boned-skin, would never do for a man. Later, my mother would tell me men aren't filling here. But in Italy. They're vineyards, grapes in vineyards and aged well--better, somehow. Sprawled in a floor of curiosities, my newfound insecurities, Italy became a woman—big-breasted and skin like alabaster, her bosom full of fawns, her men always kissing favors and stippling their words with her beauty. I couldn’t say, today, whether or not those pages contained that woman or those men. I couldn’t say she found love for one or if she were Italy. Really, I couldn’t make her

out at all, this woman. Or those men. My mother’s predictions were all hinges of a sadness, of a library stock left unread but shelved for the thought of a day she’ll need those men, to be that woman and her own Italy.