There is Capri

The island and all its colors fade into silhouettes of plant life.

All but one orange set aglow while the shadow of my arm moves on cue across the stone wall.

I stretch for the tray to catch my one hundred thousandth ash.

The lemon tree on my great aunt’s veranda has indulged the ground gold, months past “Verdelli” as it whispers mysteries into the night that my ears have not yet been primed for.

Somehow everything is more alive when you’re somewhere else where no one knows your secrets.

Turquoise waters like you’ve never seen, and a huddle of pink and white with all their guile storm the pocket of rocks we’re collecting a steady stream of vitamin D on.

Dripping with salt water, mirroring that deep red orb once again ready to set is the sort of modern day Annette Kellerman bathing suit I’m pretending, though badly and tragically so, that I was born to flaunt my half naked self around Europe in.

Azure lizards the size of my thumb run frantically up and down every iron gate containing all the word’s prettiest pinks and purples and I tend to think things like, ‘my mind shouldn’t be running as fast as those lizards in a place like this.’

I was drawn to burgundy in my youth, but it’s not ‘my’ color. I get away with wearing it on my lips when I dress myself in other colors more suited to my skin tone.

I’m nothing if not determined.

One evening I went out to be seduced by a bull’s heart tomato. It had only half of me, as I missed the pray and the love points of ‘Eat Pray Love,’ searching for that crimson lust in every cafe around every corner, desperately trying to wipe off the blood stains of my pre-Capri boyfriend, the abortion from ten years ago, the miscarriage from five, the images of my grandfather making me touch his hard on beneath white cotton sheets when I was four, and the fact that my father didn’t want his children.

The silver light of the moon walked with me and my whole lineage that night, careful not to come as close as Roberto, the island wanderer.

Through the woods back from Villa Lysis I was drawn to this Roberto, hoping he could give me what the island had failed to.

I barely opened my eyes when the world went into lock down, and for months I saw only those shadows of blackness. The back of my eye lids day in and day out with no orgasm in sight.

I see now I was only keeping secrets from me.

These days people are still dying, but I keep choosing to see the world in color. I can sometimes hear the tanned, ripe honesty of the island wanderer falling from the sky when my eyes are closed, but wide open.

“You know what your problem is? You don’t believe you’re beautiful. You have to enjoy your beauty.”