The Scent of Your Breath

Ten

I’m eating salted crackers. Over there, some delirious jazz pours from the stereo and outside it’s raining. My hips are so wide you can rest your elbows on them.

My voice is hoarse. Massimiliano was here this morning, that Neapolitan friend I told you about a few times: sometimes he comes to see me and when he smiles I can’t tell if he’s sad or what.

“I’m frightened,” I whispered to him.

He looked at me compassionately, embarrassed, and said, “Of what?”

“I’m frightened that he might betray me…,” I replied.

“What makes you think that?”

“Nothing.. it’s just a feeling.”

He looked at me and nodded, and I immediately understood what he was thinking.

I screwed up my eyes as tightly as I could and screamed, “Do you think I’m crazy?!”

He said I was getting reality muddled up, that the world I thought I lived in wasn't the real world.

“Open your eyes, Melissa. You’re creating a reality that has nothing to do with the reality around you.”

I took him by one arm and hurled him out, with such violence that a scrap of his checked shirt stayed in my hand, tom out by my furious fingers.

Then I shut the door behind him and felt dizzy for a moment. Exhausted, I went to the bathroom and noticed that in my haste I had left a blood-filled Maxi Pad in the basin. It doesn’t matter; blood doesn’t bother anyone. I went out onto the balcony; the washing machine had finished its cycle. I stood and looked inside the dram for a while — I don’t know why. My head is so full of thoughts it seems empty. I’m sated with happiness, happiness is exhausting me, demoralizing me. I ask myself every day, every moment, if this happiness will end and when. I’m too apocalyptic, I know. And maybe masochistic. Yes, I’m well aware of that. The messages sent by the world are exasperating: nothing lasts forever, everything comes to an end, everything withers, everything dies. And if it didn’t happen to me, well, what about that? If I stayed this age forever, if I remained intellectually ignorant, if I stayed in love forever, what about that?

I know, I can’t accept change. I’m too much of a traditionalist, too attached to my memories and, paradoxically, attached to fantasies about the future. That’s why my present is so restless, even if it’s happy: I mix the past, the future, and the present as though an exquisite sweet might emerge from the dough. A sweet that does you good because it hurts. A sweet that’s good because it’s full of clashing ingredients.

There is nothing positive in this wealth of feelings. It’s an orgy, Mum. An orgy of feelings…in which it’s impossible to work out who’s winning, in which you can’t predict whether the ultimate winner will be death or life, pain or love. It’s an infinite chaos, bound by many little interlocking rings that have slipped into my throat, dragging me to places that are never the same, to more and more exasperating states of mind.

I’m disturbed to the depths of my marrow. I don’t know how to hold back my instincts; I allow myself to be corrupted by my obsessions, by my most violent passions. Do you think it’s just because I’m Sicilian? Or is it because I’m fucking terrified of losing the most beautiful part of me? Of losing Thomas?