One of Those Days
It’s one of those days when you lean against the thick cobblestone wall overlooking the expanse of rolling hills dotted with lean olive trees. The sun kisses your cheeks with its warmth and blesses the stones, which radiate its heat. They gift it back to you as you lean into and rest your arms across the bumpy expanse of wall. The breeze tickles the nape of your neck. He kisses your cheek and whispers I love you in your ear like it’s your secret and yours alone even though the wind is eavesdropping. You smile at his hand on your waist, his closeness, and whisper I love you too, not caring if the wind announces your proclamation to the Vatican or tosses it in the ocean. He’s on one knee and opens a little box that says this is just one of our days and I want to spend every one after it with you and only you. A tourist or two stops to document this day, but you don’t need a camera to remember it’s one when you say yes.
It’s one of those days when you join his family with bells. His tuxedo matches his gelled black hair and beard that cannot hide his dimpled grin. You float toward him in a white winter dress. It’s one of your favorite things about him, the way his smile can spread its glow from his heart to yours without touch. Then when he holds your hand finally you think I am so happy this day has come. You think about the fact that he left his land for yours and chose you. He chose you like he just met a nice girl and kissed her and bought her flowers and took her home to his mother. Except she was you. The reason he never came home from his semester abroad. You had to wait to meet his mother until a month before standing in this cattedrale; she lives across the Atlantic and makes green bean casseroles for dinner instead of risotto. And now, his mother is your mother. The two seats reserved on your side of the church for parents will never be filled. Their absence reverberates off every wall. But you look at his grin and remember it’s one of those days when everything is going to be okay.
It’s one of those autumn days when your belly kicks. You rest your hand on the smoothness jutting out from your frame, not minding the way your navel protrudes in a parasol of stretch marks. His mother calls with a good morning! or, I suppose it’s evening for you over there. You tell her there are still a few months to go before it’s time, you finally mastered the art of tuna noodle casserole, and we finally painted the room blue. You laugh when she asks about how your articles are going, because Berlusconi’s running for office again, and if he wins we’ll make sure to come to you. It’s the first day she says your English is getting so good and you say thanks, because you want to make his mother proud.
It’s one of those days when pain jolts through your body, like a million lightning bolts tearing through flesh. It’s too early something’s wrong, make it stop, make it stop! Until it finally does, but the doctors are sprinting. He is trying to grin at you, but it’s twisted into something rotten, and you ask why isn’t the baby crying?
It’s one of those days of the fallout. When breathing in and out feels like a chore more than something your body does without your knowing. Like you have to force the air through clenched teeth or else it might stop altogether and that weight in your chest will crush you. That weight in your chest so heavy that when you lie down in your bed, it spreads like thick tar over your ribs and into your stomach and the absence inside. This warmth suffocating your lungs must be toxic if your forehead’s clammy, and the truth is sinking in why God and He replies well it’s just one of those days, or at least that’s what you hear the wind whistle through the naked trees.
It’s one of those days when he kisses your forehead and each tear as they cascade down your cheeks. His firm embrace muffles every broken perdonami, perdonami, I’m sorry that escapes your lips until he holds your hands and says ricominceremo, amore. We’ll start over.
It’s one of those days when you step off of the plane and breathe in the woody air of the world outside after inhaling only stale oxygen for twelve hours. Only now there are no olive trees but tall palms that tower over you, that will cradle you in your new bungalow. Even though the air doesn’t smell like the almost-downpours of home, the moon is the same. You tell yourself it’s one of those days whether it shines on cobblestone and cattedrali or asphalt and megachurches.
It’s one of those days when someone sneers in America we speak English. You try to explain you are from Italy, and you made a mistake. And you’re trying so hard to ask others how they are without expecting a response instead of stopping to chat and shake hands or kissing cheeks. You make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches instead of bruschetta, and you still get the kiss on your cheek when you walk through the front door. But it’s just one of those days.
It’s one of those days when he’s inside you and you hold yourself up to him. You clutch his back and run your nails along his sweaty body until he grunts loudly, eventually climbing off. He whispers ti amo. Your echo is resolute but hollow, like the caverns eating away at the organs inside your body. You turn away and pray he falls asleep soon so he won’t see your tears in the wake of his pure, undeserved love.
It’s one of those days when he smiles that beautiful smile but its glow doesn’t reach your heart that you fear has shriveled up, and you wonder if it’ll stop beating altogether. He holds you in hallowed arms while watching television. Your pulse thuds in doubletime against his palms while his is slow and steady against your back. In the deafening silence, you realize that in all of your mourning, you’ve forgotten to hold him until his racing pulse slows. Forgotten to open space in your heart for its other half. You wonder if he has learned to slow it without you, and that thought deepens the wound. You sink deeper into numbness.
It’s one of those days when he yells with that same impatient glare as the cashier at the grocery store when you asked for the “recipe” instead of the “receipt.” Or when you stared as they asked for your ID. But less spiteful than the men on your walk home as they alternated between cries of crude fantasies of your body and violent threats of how they’ll drag it across the border if they must. You wrap your arms around yourself as a shield. Only you can feel your ribs a little too well through your shirt, and the circles under your eyes near the same shade of black of his hair. You scream back I’m trying I’m hurting I’m so broken don’t you understand until he holds you and your ribs in his embrace and sobs. You want to join him, but your eyes only swell crimson in your sleep these days.
It’s one of those days when you burn the macaroni and cheese in the oven and you curse but it’s in English, not Italian. You throw it all in the trash and slide down to the ground as the cabinet handles bruise your ribs along the way. You hold your head in your hands with a longing for familiarity and food and home, but it’s one of those days where you’re not sure how many more days you can take.
It’s one of those days when he knocks on the doorframe, and you respond come in but remain folded in the armchair. You feel his hand on your shoulder, but your gaze fixates on the tacky rug on the ground and your eyes fog. He says your name and you nod. He sets something on the side table before leaving. You sit and stare and sit and stare and breathe until you look at the side table: a bowl of caprese. You reach for the ceramic dish, so heavy in your bony grip. Tentatively, slowly, you take a bite. It’s not Italy, but it’s one of those days where you can taste home in the basil, oil, balsamic vinegar, creamy cheese, fresh tomatoes. Suddenly you can smell one of those days with the damp Arezzo air and cigarette smoke. You can hear the rolled tongues and drawn out words of your native language in place of choppy gutturals. You can see the olive skin of your people and the rolling hills and cobblestone paths, and you can almost feel the stones along your childhood chiesa and the warmth they radiate onto your skin as you lean against it.
And though he is only halfway to understanding, though you’re a star tethered by a thread to a cloudy constellation, and though you’ll never get to sing that lullaby, you cradle the bowl in your arms and let its tune reverberate in your chest.
It’s one of those days where it takes breathing before the words sputter out of your mouth. But once they start, you realize how long it’s been since you let your tongue trill into those sonorous rs, let your jaw and tongue work together to sling the throaty gl of your mother tongue. And though you have not been able to look at his bearded face in search of his long-absent, dimpled grin this whole time, you dare to now as you unlock the burdens of your heart. Despite it all, tears trace the valley of his dimpled smile, and you finally exhale. Your glow, however weak its pulsing radiance may be, reaches his heart for the first time in months. He holds your bony hand in his, and you realize that, despite your worst fears, he has never stopped being your translator without language, your family without blood, your home without borders. He leans his forehead against yours and whispers ti amo. This time, your echo is shaky, but alive. The barren caverns in your body are sprouting. The weight of the past year has scorched you and him, but as your tears fall freely, you feel the promise of rebirth on the horizon.
It’s one of those days when you lean against the stucco that will surely pill your clothes, but at least your view of the palm-tree speckled beach distracts from the prickling against your legs. He reaches out and hands you a lemon gelato and says it’s not like home and you grin if it were it wouldn’t be California. He chuckles in agreement, wrapping his arm around your slightly less fragile frame. You smile at his hands on your waist, his closeness. You bury your nose in his chest as you breathe in what you had almost forgotten: the smell of him, the sun blessing each fiber of his clothing, kissing the skin and the black curls that peek from his chest. You whisper I love you as though it’s your secret alone. And he kisses your forehead, not caring if the rest of the world might never hear him return the words themselves.
Because it’s one of those days where you remember his mere presence is enough. It’s one where your existence doesn’t require proof of belonging. Because whether or not your titles of mother or immigrant fall to dust, as so many future titles will in years to come, he never stops wanting another one of those days. Regardless of whether you hold his hand. Or crumble into the floor. Because another one of those days with you will always beat one of those days without you. Will always beat one of those days without him.
And you don’t need the words to remember that today is one of those days when you look forward to another one.
Alysa Levi-D'Ancona is the author of the chapbook An Absurd Palate (Querencia Press 2023). She was born in Trieste, Italy, grew up in Chicagoland, and lives in Seattle, Washington with her husband and two polydactyl cats. She received her MFA in Creative Writing and Poetics from the University of Washington Bothell in June 2023, and she teaches high school English by day. Liminality, surrealism, burlesque, absurdism, and speculative fiction are the pepper of her pages; stories, coffee, cooking, hikes, and blankets are the salt of her earth. Levi-D'Ancona's writing has recently appeared in Tulip Tree Press, Querencia Press, Occulum, Stone Pacific, The RavensPerch, UWB Crow, Clamor, Alice Says Go Fuck Yourself, Cream Scene Carnival Magazine, and Caustic Frolic.