an empty playground.
three o'clock sun bangs its weary head on a pine tree, maritime pine. coriandoli per terra. i am barely here and already my heart is being drummed and pulled and twisted in ways impossible for cardiac muscle. ther are messages of hate on the ochre walls of a school. this jacket compacts me into a tube like thing, closed against the cold surface of benches and air and faces.

i paint round things in my head, mix colours there sometimes, when my hands are brittle. an eruption of thickness and it smells of dust and olive oil. my feet remember the crunching of shrubs and old walls and all those surfaces of the mediterranean. it smells of salt there, and crickets like choirboys, except softer, more like glass bells in my hair. it smells of ribs roasting on an open flame, and beer spilt on dresses and the clapping of hands. it smells of the south of the world. of things i cannot taste now.

there are places where love is not permitted.