Roberta Mezzabarba – The Confessions Of A Concubine (страница 8)

"We should find our own place, somewhere just ours where we can meet without problems."

"Pietro, are you crazy? What do you want to do, rent a room in a hotel by the hour? And where, anyway, in this provincial town, where everyone knows everything about everyone?"

"Don’t worry baby, the important thing is that you want me. We could take a train and go a bit further away, and find some place near the station."

I didn't want to go a bit further away and find a place near the station. I feared that that moment would soon arrive, I feared that Pietro would ask me for more. It was enough to feel his gaze on me, his words, I needed it desperetely.

That might have been enough for me, but maybe not for him.

***

I had put the pots with lunch for the next day and the stew for dinner on the stove, when I took the notebook out of my bag, put it on the kitchen table and opened it.

Spontaneously, without knowing where the pen would take me, I began to write.

If loving is a mistake

then I am guilty.

Tie my lungs

and stifle the song

that comes out improperly

to disturb the sleep of the righteous.

If loving is a defect

then I am imperfect,

Unworthy.

Tear pieces from my heart

and lay them on the cold tray

of respectability.

If to love is inappropriate,

when the path deviates,

lose me.

Nothing is more dangerous

than a burning spark

when dead branches

are stacked around it.

But if loving is inevitable,

appropriate

deserved

if it is breath,

light

magnificence of the soul,

pathway,

discovery,

youth,

ransom,

mutation,

motive,

I love for all this,

but above all because in me

the stele of courage

it is not yet lost.

I stopped, rested the pen on the table, vibrant with emotion and surprise from my own words.

It was the first time I had stopped thoughts with ink.

It was time to turn off the stove and start waiting for Filippo to come home.

My mind wandered freely in dreams, imagining that Pietro came in through that door, with his smile, with his fresh love.

The phone rings and abruptly brings me back with my feet on the ground.

"Hello?"

"Hello baby, can you talk?"

"Yes, but how did you get my home number? And why..."